The life and times of Laurence Sterne

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THE LIFE AND TIMES

OF

LAURENCE STERNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NSW YORK BOSTON • CHICAGO
ATLANTA * SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY CALCUTTA

MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

Laurence Sterne
From a painting by Gainsborough in the Salforel Art Galleries

The Life and Times

of

Laurence Sterne

wilbur l. Cross

Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School
of Yale University

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Birth and Education 3

II. Marriage and Settlement at Sutton-on-the-Forest 36

III. Politics and Honours 67

IV. Quarrel with his Uncle 87

V. Pastimes and Friendships 104

VI. The Parson in his Library 130

VII A Good "Warm Watch-Coat 153

VIII. The Publication of Tristram Shandy: Volumes I and II. . . 178

IX The Sermons of Mr. Torick 210

X. Shandy Hall. Tristram Shandy: Volumes III and IV. . . 233

XL Shandy Hall Continued. Tristram Shandy: Volumes V

and VI '-^£L

XII. 'Paris 271

XIII. Journey to Toulouse 293

XIV. A Gentleman of Prance 308

XV. Yorkshire and London. Tristram Shandy: Volumes VII

and VIII 330

XVI. Yorkshire and London Continued. Sermons: Volumes III

and IV 344

XVII. The Tour of Italy 360

XVIII. • The Last Volume of Tristram Shandy 386_

XIX. The Journal to Eliza 403

XX. The Sentimental Journey 433

XXI. Illness and Death 456

XXII. Lydia and her Mother. Posthumous Sermons and Letters 470

XXin. Mrs. Draper 496

Conclusion 511

Appendix 524

Index 539

PREFACE

This book aims to present, within reasonable compass, the
personal history of Laurence Sterne, along with some account
of the numerous men and women with whom he associated at
home and abroad. Hence it has been called, after an old
fashion for similar biographies, "The Life and Times of
Laurence Sterne".

The title-page should be sufficient warning to the reader
not to expect here a series of essays on the different aspects of
Sterne's humour, or elaborate comparisons between Sterne
and the humourists before and since his time. Masterly dis-
quisitions of this kind we have already from Bagehot, Traill,
and Watts-Dunton, not to mention briefer critical opinions
from Thackeray, Coleridge, and Carlyle. My main purpose
has been biographical. The questions ever before me have
been: What sort of man was Sterne? How did he conduct
himself in the days of his obscurity and after he had come
into his fame? "What did he do and what did he say?
What books did he read ? What were his pastimes ? and what
were his pleasures ? Who were his friends ? and who were his
enemies, if he had any? And what did they say or think of
him? In a word, wherein lay the secret of the man whose
speech and conduct filled the imaginations of all who knew
him intimately, whether at York, London, or Paris? These
questions, forsooth, would be without much interest, as Nepos
once remarked in a similar case, were not Sterne the author
of two books which give him a large place in modern litera-
ture, perhaps by the side of Rabelais and Cervantes. Cer-
tainly the publication of Tristram Shandy and of the Senti-
mental Journey must be kept in mind as the great incidents
in Sterne's life. Towards them and his other works must
converge all personal details. It is only because of these
books that a biographer can surely count upon a curiosity to
know something about the personality of him who wrote them.
But if it turns out, as it will, that Tristram Shandy and the

^ PEEFACE

Sentimental Journey are in part autobiography, and that
their author was as strange a compound of whims as are
they, then new points of vantage may be gained for viewing
and judging Sterne stage by stage in his career, and for
presenting a final portrait of the man in relation to his
works.

The materials for a life of Sterne, though not abundant,
are quite adequate at most points. For his childhood, we
have the memoirs which he wrote out for his daughter just
before his death. For the period covering his life as Pre-
bendary of York and Vicar 6i Sutton, we have a series of
letters to a friend; a long letter to his uncle, amounting
almost to an autobiography ; a body of anecdotes collected by
one who, as a boy, tagged at his heels and listened to his jests
by the fireside after supper; and a series of local pamphlets
in an amusing warfare to which the Yorkshire parson con-
tributed the chief merriment. For Sterne in his fame, we
have nearly two hundred letters to various friends; many
references to him in the newspapers and in contemporary
memoirs and correspondence; a journal extending over six
important months of the year before his death; and the
observations of a French Academician, who closely watched
him in and out of the Parisian salons, conversed with him on
various occasions, and wrote down his impressions of the
Chevalier Sterne. Finally, there are the portraits of Sterne
by the great painters of the age, who invited him to their
tables, studied him there under the most favourable condi-
tions, and asked him to sit to them the next morning.

Nevertheless a life of Sterne has proved no easy task for
several reasons. In the first place it has been a slow process
to collect materials which lie dispersed in many books, docu-
ments, and manuscripts. True, this work had been per-
formed to some extent by others; but the current biography
of Sterne in two volumes is so untrustworthy in all details,
that any reliance upon it would have meant disaster. The
sketch of Sterne by Mr. Sidney Lee in the Dictionary of
National Biography is admirable in those parts for which the
author consulted manuscripts near at hand, but it suffers
elsewhere from a repetition of old errors, which, once in print

PKEFACE

vii

seem destined to thrive forever. It would, however, be ungen-
erous not to acknowledge many obligations to all who have
written upon Sterne since the time of Scott. Without the
aid of Mr. Lee's excellent bibliography, my undertaking,
difficult as it has been, would have been much more difficult.
Again, the question how far Tristram Shandy and the
Sentimental Journey are a rendering of actual incidents in
Sterne's personal history must be always present, though it
can never be quite answered; for all that a biographer can
expect is corroborative evidence here and there from external
sources. Whether he goes right or wrong in his inferences
from such facts as are at his command, depends partly upon
his judgment, and partly upon his conception of Sterne's
character, which may be either true or false. No one can
ever feel quite sure of himself in dealing with these apparent
correspondences. He knows that incidents in Sterne's life,
all the way from boyhood down to near death, are in
Sterne's books; but he knows also that they are entangled
with much that is extraneous. The cautious and yet very
large use that I have made of Tristram Shandy and of the
Sentimental Journey will appear justified, I trust, in the
course of the narrative.

Moreover, Sterne's correspondence, upon which a biog-
rapher must mainly depend, has survived in a wretched con-
dition. The early collections of his letters contain forgeries
which must be sifted out. In letters for the most part genuine,
passages have . been suppressed and replaced by new ones.
Names of correspondents and of persons mentioned within
the letters are commonly indicated by an initial or two; and
at times there is no clue to them at all, unless one may read
a line of stars into a name. In a similar but not identical
fashion, Sterne's correspondence as. published in later times
has been interpolated or modified in phrasing, apparently in
order to make out of the humourist a man more reckless in
his speech than he really was, to give piquancy, as it were, to
his character, as if it needed any. Were there space here, it
would be interesting to illustrate in detail how this has been
done. A passage, for example, in one of the letters to the
Rev. John Blake was deleted by the editor of the series, and

viii PREFACE

compensation was made for the loss by inserting a phrase
which does not occur anywhere in the original. In other
cases, a letter in its published form may be quite at variance
with the manuscript. Soon after reaching London in 1760,
Sterne wrote, for instance, a gay note to Richard Berenger,
master of horse to George the Third, requesting that he ride
out to Leicester Fields and ask Hogarth for a frontispiece
to the new edition of Tristram Shandy. The following
is the letter as Sterne copied it into his Letter-Book* for
preservation :

"My dear Berenger,

"You bid me tell you all my wants what the duce can

the man want now? what would I not give to have but ten
strokes of Howgarth's witty chissel at the front of my next
Edition of Tristram Shandy [the Vanity of a pretty woman
in the hey-day of her Triumphs, is a Fool to the vanity of a

successful author oma me, sigh'd Swift to Pope,

unite something of yours to mine to wind us together in one

sheet down to posterity 1 will, I will; said Pope but

you dont do it enough said Swift

"Now the loosest Sketch in nature of Trim's reading the
sermon to my father & my uncle Toby will content me

"I would hold out my lank purse — I would shut my eyes
— & you should put your hand into it & take out what

[you] liked for it Blockhead ! this gift is not bought with

money perish thee & thy gold with thee.

"What shall we do? I would not propose a disagreeable

thing to one I so much admire, for the whole world : You

are a hard faced, impudent, honest dog prithee stop &

sans menagement, begin thus,

" 'Mr. Hogarth, my friend Shandy'. but go on your

own way as I shall do mine, all my Life,

"So adieu."

After lying hidden for more than a century, the letter
appeared in Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's Life of Sterne,\ expanded
and ornamented to read as follows :

* Morgan Marmacripts.

t Vol. I. 160-61 (London, 1896).

PBEFACE ix

"You bid me tell you all my wants. What the Devil in
Hell can a fellow want now? By the Father of the Sciences
(you know his name) I would give both my ears (if I was
not to lose my credit by it) for no more than ten strokes of
Howgarth's witty chisel, to clap at the Front of my next
Edition of Shandy. The Vanity of a Pretty Girl in the
Heyday of her Eoses & Lilies is a fool to that of Author of
my stamp. Oft did Swift sigh to Pope in these words:
'Orna me, unite something of yours to mine, to transmit us
down together hand in hand to futurity.' The loosest sketch
in Nature, of Trim's reading the sermon to my Father, &c,
wd do the Business, and it wd mutually illustrate his System
and mine. But, my dear Shandy, with what face I would
hold out my lank Purse! I would shut my Eyes, & you
should put in your hand and take out what you liked for it.
Ignoramus! Fool! Blockhead! Symoniack! This Grace is
not to be bought with money. Perish thee and thy Gold with
thee ! What shall we do ? I have the worst face in the world
to ask a favour with, & besides, I would not propose a dis-
agreeable thing to one I so much admire for the whole world ;

but you can say anything you are an impudent, honest

Dog, & can 'st set a face upon a bad matter ; prithee sally out
to Leicester fields, & when you have knock 'd at the door (for
you must knock first) and art got in, begin thus: 'Mr.
Hogarth, I have been with my friend Shandy this morning;'
but go on yr own way, as I shall do mine. I esteem you, &
am, my dear Mentor, Yrs most Shandascally, L. Sterne."

Two versions of the same letter differing so greatly as
these, are very perplexing as well as very amusing. Did
Sterne, in copying out the letter, tone it down? or has the
original manuscript been expanded and vulgarised by other
hands? These questions could be answered only by an in-
spection of the manuscript which Mr. Fitzgerald derived
from a source not mentioned in his Life of Sterne. As the
safer way, it has been my custom, in all doubtful cases, to
quote from an autograph manuscript, even though it may not
represent the letter as it actually passed through the post.

It is hardly necessary to say that I can have no motive
for representing Sterne otherwise than in the habit as he

x m PBEFACE

lived. Had I any motive to the contrary, I should be dis-
armed by the humourist himself, who said famously: "If the-
characters of past ages and men are to be drawn at all, they
should be drawn like themselves; that is with their excel-
lencies, and with their foibles." I have not spared Sterne
nor have I idealised him. That the truth might be told,
whether it be for or against his character, I have examined
all available manuscripts which have come to my knowledge.
The largest single collection is at the British Museum, whose
officers have granted me the usual privileges for having them
copied or photographed. The story of Mrs. Draper's life and
of her friendship with Sterne was rendered possible only by
the courtesy of Lord Basing, who placed at my disposal Mrs.
Draper's unpublished correspondence and other documents
preserved at Hoddington. A part of the Letter-Book in
which Sterne copied out letters which he particularly liked,
whether his own or from his friends, has been recently ac-
quired by J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq., who generously gave me
access to it. This old book, besides containing several inter-
esting letters which have never been published, proved the
authenticity of more than thirty other letters long supposed
to be forgeries. The originals or copies of one or more letters
were also supplied by Mr. Alfred Huth of London, Mr. A. H.
Joline of New York City, Mr. W. K. Bixby of St. Louis,
Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons and Messrs. Dodd, Mead &
Co., of New York City, and Messrs. Eobson and Co. and
Messrs. Henry Sotheran and Co., of London. In quoting from
these and other private manuscripts, I have aimed to keep well
within the bounds set by their owners. All excerpts from origi-
nal letters have been printed as Sterne or Mrs. Draper wrote
them, save that numerals and abbreviations have been written
out in full, and occasional changes have been made in capitals
and punctuation where the one or the other appeared very
awkward or very obscure. In all this, I have remembered
though I could not always follow it to the letter, Sterne's
injunction to his printer: "That, at your peril, you do not
presume to alter or transpose one Word, nor rectify one false
Spelling, nor so much as add or diminish one Comma or
Tittle".

PBEFACE Xj

Underlying this account of the humourist's life, especially
of his life in the north, is information derived from local
records and newspapers. The Institutions of the Diocese of
York and the Act Book of the Dean and Chapter not only
shed light upon the details of Sterne's ecclesiastical appoint-
ments, but they also serve to identify many of his friends at
York. The parish book at Sutton is curious for its Shandean
entries; and the memorials of 'deeds in the Registry Office at
Northallerton reveal Sterne's dealings in land. In this con-
nection, I have to thank especially the Rev. Canon Watson
of the Minster Library, by whose aid was discovered the first
edition of Sterne's Political Romance. The library contains
also many local pamphlets indispensable to the biographer,
and a file of the York Courant, covering nearly the entire
period of Sterne's active life. I should not forget, too, for
their assistance, Dr. George A. Auden, of Birmingham, Mr.
A. H. Hudson, Registrar of the Diocese of York, the late
T. B. Whytehead, Clerk of the Dean and Chapter, and
Mr. William Brown, F.S.A., of Thirsk, with his exact know-
ledge of local conditions in the eighteenth century. I am
indebted to Mr. W. W. Smith of Lincoln for Sterne's appoint-
ment to St. Ives, as recorded in the Act Book of the Bishop
of Lincoln, and to Mr. Edwin Abbott, Librarian of Jesus
College, for all entries relative to Sterne in the college
register.

It has been a part of my plan to bring together all the
great portraits of Sterne and to make selections from the
most interesting among the rest. Such a collection would
have been impossible but for the courtesy of the owners of the
original paintings. Lord Lansdowne granted permission to
photograph the painting by Reynolds at Lansdowne House.
It is a soberer face than that of any of the engravings after
the portrait, which are really caricatures of Sterne. The
Earl of Yarborough likewise gave permission to reproduce
the bust in terra-cotta executed by Nollekens when Sterne*
was at Rome; but at the last moment it became necessary to
employ for this purpose a photograph of the marble replica
at Skelton Castle. The portrait after Gainsborough has
been made directly from the original painting in the Art

xy PREFACE

GaUeries of the Peel Park Museum at Salford, by permission
of the Corporation. This beautiful painting, in which Sterne
appears dressed in the height of fashion, has never before
been engraved. Nor is any engraving known to exist of the
youthful portrait by Eamsay in the Hall of Jesus College,
Cambridge, which is reproduced here by permission of the
Master and Fellows.

No less interesting is Sterne as he appeared to a French-
man, in the water-colour by Carmontelle, now in the collection
of the Due d'Aumale at Chantilly. It has been reproduced
for this book after an especially fine engraving made in 1890
by Messrs. Colnaghi and Company of London. A print of the
curious caricature of Sterne by Thomas Bridges of York, the
original of which is either lost or carefully kept from the
public, was supplied by Dr. George A. Auden of Birmingham.
To make the list complete, I should mention two other por-
traits of Sterne in the eighteenth century, — one by Napoleon
Thomas and the other by Hopkins. The former was engraved
by Ferdinand and the latter by Heath. Neither portrait,
however, adds anything to our knowledge of Sterne's appear-
ance, for both Thomas and Hopkins were born too late to
have any personal acquaintance with the humourist. In the
text I have also described a second and almost unknown por-
trait by Beynolds. It is in no way comparable with the
painter's masterpiece, and for that reason it has not been
included among the illustrations of this work. The engrav-
ing of Hall-Stevenson — Sterne's other self — has been made
from a photograph of a very fine portrait, which was sent me
by W. H. A. Wharton, Esq., of Skelton Castle.

A descriptive bibliography of Sterne's manuscripts and
published works will be found in the Appendix.

In conclusion, I have to thank Miss E. J. Hastings of
London for her faithful and most intelligent aid while col-
lecting material for this book. The proofs have been kindly
read by Mr. Andrew Keogh of Yale University Library.

March 18, 1909.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PASE

Laurence Sterne Frontispiece

From a painting by Gainsborough in the Salford Art Galleries.

Laurence Sterne 36

From a painting by Ramsay at Jesus College, Cambridge.

Thomas Bridges and Laurence Sterne 104

Skelton Castle 130

From the frontispiece to Crazy Tales.

Laurence Sterne 210

From a painting by Reynolds at Lansdowne House.

Laurence Sterne 288

From a water colour by Carmontelle at Chantilly.

Laurence Sterne 381

From the replica of a bust by Nollekens at Skelton Castle.

John Hall-Stevenson 470

From a painting at Skelton Castle.

THE LIFE AND TIMES

OF

LAURENCE STERNE

CHAPTER I

BIETH AND EDUCATION
1713-1736

The great humourist whose life I have undertaken to
relate anew, would have been amused by a serious attempt to
discover him among his ancestors. Musty records preserved
religiously by his Yorkshire neighbours, that they might the
more readily boast the achievements of a great-grandfather,
interested him, it is true, greatly ; but only because they fur-
nished matter for jest. His Tristram Shandy is, as all
readers of it know, a burlesque history of a typical English
family (much like Sterne's own) that gained its rank in the
time of Henry the Eighth, and subsequently sank under the
disgrace of flat noses and inauspicious names. The Shandys
could claim in the sixteenth century, says Sterne with near
reference to himself, "no less than a dozen alchymists,"
whose souls passed on, a century or two later, into an arch-
bishop, a Welsh judge, "some three or four aldermen", and
eventually into a mountebank. His more ideal self, which %
bears the name of Parson Yorick, the humourist aptly derived
in direct line from Shakespeare's Yorick of Denmark, whose
"flashes of merriment were wont to set the table on a roar"
far back in the days of the good King Hamlet. Despite this
raillery of himself as akin to the old alchemists and court
jesters, Sterne was glad enough to count among his ancestors
an Archbishop of York and a succession of country gentlemen
since the fifteenth century. Long annoyed by scribblers'
tales about his early life and whence he came, he set down,
some six months before his death, certain particulars of family
history and of his boyhood for his daughter Lydia, "in case
hereafter she should have a curiosity or a kinder motive to
know them".

It may well be that Danish blood really flowed in Sterne's

3

4 LAUEENCB STERNE

veins as well as in the imaginary Yorick's; for the family to
which he belonged sprang from the yeomanry and minor
gentry of old East Anglia— Norfolk and Suffolk— and the
border shires where the Danes settled in great numbers.
Thence various members of the family migrated to the north
until Yorkshire became their chief home, while others settled
in Ireland, establishing there a collateral branch, which
included John Sterne (1624-1669), the founder of the Irish
College of Physicians at Dublin, and his son, likewise named
John (1660-1745), who became in turn Dean of St. Patrick's
and Bishop of Clogher. The latter figures in literary history
as an intimate friend of Swift and Stella, whom he enter-
tained with profuse hospitality. The more learned of the
family evidently associated their name with the old English
word stearn, dialectical starn to this day, signifying a star-
ling; for as soon as they rose to rank and wealth, their arms
appeared, with some variation, as "gold, a chevron engrailed
between three crosses flory sable, surmounted with a starling
in proper colours for a crest". That starling, made captive,
it will be remembered, was long afterwards brought into the
Sentimental Journey as the motive for a pathetic discourse
on the bitterness of slavery.

Laurence Sterne, the subject of this biography, was in
direct descent from William Sterne, who was living towards
the close of Elizabeth's reign at Cropwell-Butler, a village
and manor to the south of Bingham in Nottinghamshire.
William Sterne was in turn lineally descended, as his arms
clearly indicate, from the Sternes that had been long seated
near Cambridge, first at Stapleford and afterwards at Stow-
cum-Quy, whence issued also the Sternes in Ireland. Ee-
moter ancestry of the family points especially to the Sternes
who by marriage with the Gambons came into possession of
Whitwell Hall in Norfolk under the Lancastrian kings. A
son of the William Sterne aforementioned, named Simon,
settled at Mansfield, "a flourishing and genteel market town"
some miles to the north of Cropwell-Butler, where he married
Margery, daughter of Gregory Walker and widow of one
Charles Cartwright. Of the marriage was born, in or near

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 5

1596, Richard Sterne, who, becoming Archbishop of York,
was the first to give distinction to the family name.

This Richard Sterne, great-grandfather of the humourist,
was a man who combined shrewd intelligence with that energy
necessary for making one's way in the world. As a boy
"two remarkable deliverances" were related of him by the
old story-tellers. He fell into a sluice which carried him
beneath a mill-wheel, and tumbled from a church-steeple
where he was playing at see-saw with another boy; but in
both cases he escaped unharmed under the guidance of "a
gracious Providence". He attended the free school at Mans-
field, whence he passed, at the age of fifteen, to Trinity
College, Cambridge. After taking the usual degrees in arts,
he was elected Fellow of Corpus Christi, and for ten years
thereafter "engaged in the instruction of pupils with credit
both to himself and to the college". In the meantime, both
of the great universities honoured him with degrees in
divinity, and he became well known among ecclesiastics —
the distinction seems rather grotesque — for a summary of
"the 3600 faults in our printed Bibles", a feat in line with
the labours of Scaliger and other learned classical scholars
of the preceding generation who had awakened wonder by
the multitude of errors which they were able to discover in
ancient texts. Early in 1634, the Bishop of Ely, by direction
of his Majesty, appointed him Master of Jesus College. To
Sterne's prestige as teacher and scholar was now added that
of an able administrator. By his efforts among the fellows
and other friends, funds were raised for various purposes,
but especially for building "the north side of the outer
court" of Jesus College, which still stands "as a monument
to his name".

The young Master of Jesus — not yet forty years old
— was, as might be inferred from his position, a most
ardent supporter of the existing order in church and state.
Archbishop Laud summoned him to London and enrolled him
among his chaplains, to say nothing of other substantial
honours conferred upon him: all, doubtless, with a view to
having at Cambridge an adherent who could be trusted to
furnish full and accurate information concerning things

6 LAURENCE STERNE

ecclesiastical. To King Charles and his agents who came
frequently to Cambridge, Sterne was also equally loyal. In
the summer of 1642, the king set up his standard at Notting-
ham and made ready for battle. At that juncture, Sterne
joined with two other Cambridge masters in collecting and
sending moneys and plate to his Majesty. Cromwell was on
the watch, and though the treasure reached the king, the
masters were surrounded while at prayers in their several
chapels, and taken up to London; led captive, says the con-
temporary account, "through Bartholomew Fair, and so far
as Temple Bar, and back through the city to prison in the
Tower, on purpose that they might be hooted at or stoned by
the rabble rout". During three years of imprisonment in
various places, Sterne was subjected at times to barbarous
usage, barely escaping transportation; but these were among
common incidents of the Revolution, as was likewise his
ejection from the mastership of Jesus College.

During this dark period Richard Sterne once stepped
forth to the light to take part in a memorable scene. The
Revolution was moving on swiftly. The king had been
defeated at Marston Moor, and Laud was about to go the way
of Strafford. Scant four days were given the archbishop to
prepare for death. On Laud's petition to Parliament that
one of his ancient chaplains might be sent to him to
administer spiritual comfort, if he must die, Dr. Sterne was
selected. Sterne was with his friend and patron during the
last three days of his life, and attended him to the scaffold.
After reading his last sermon and last public prayer, Laud
turned toward the block, and, as he did so, he placed the
manuscript in the hands of his chaplain, that the world might
have true and faithful copies thereof. Liberated soon after
this terrible event, Sterne passed many subsequent years in
seclusion at Stevenage in Hertfordshire, where, save for a
small pension from one of Laud's friends, he earned a liveli-
hood by taking pupils. "When Charles the Second returned
to his own, Sterne was among the first to win preferment.
A few months in his Cambridge mastership once more and
three years Bishop of Carlisle, he was translated in the spring
of 1664 to the archbishopric of York, where he sat until his

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 7

death on June 18, 1683. His body lies buried in the chapel
of St. Stephen in his own cathedral at York. To his memory
his grandson Richard erected a marble monument with a
canopy, beneath which half reclines a mitred figure with the
head resting upon one of the hands. A fine portrait of the
archbishop in his splendid robes, a mezzotint by Francis Place
of York, hangs near Cranmer's over the dais in the hall of
Jesus College. With eyes curiously askance, the dignified
prelate looks down the hall, past Coleridge, upon the youthful
portrait of his great-grandson, as if in question whether he
should own him.

It would be impossible to imagine the archbishop sitting
down to Gargantua or Pantagruel, the nearest approach to
Tristram Shandy in those days. His face, with no trace of
humour in it, looks too serious for that. As a young man,
this Eichard Sterne wrote Latin verses and commented upon
the Psalms. Later in life he bore a hand in Brian Walton's
Polyglot Bible involving nine languages, and subsequently
assisted in a revision of the Book of Common Prayer. After
his death appeared a Latin treatise of his on logic, with illus-
trations drawn mostly from the Scriptures ; and to him has
been long attributed, though doubtfully, the authorship of
The Whole Duty of Man. While Archbishop of York, he
made many friends and many enemies. To those who agreed
with him "he was a man of eminent worth and abilities".
"He was", says a letter from York just after his death,
"greatly respected and generally lamented. All the clergy
commemorate his sweet condescensions, his free communica-
tions, faithful counsels, exemplary temperance, cheerful hos-
pitality and bountiful charity".* On the other hand, Burnet
regarded him as only "a sour, ill-tempered" ecclesiastic, who,
after gaining the see of York, "minded chiefly the enriching
of his family". As a politician, it is said further, he was
more than ordinarily compliant in his last years to the Court
and to the Duke of York ; wherefore came the suspicion that
he was at heart a Papist. Baxter, who clashed with him in

* Nicolson and Burn, History of Antiquities of Westmoreland and
Cumberland, II, 290 (London, 1777). In contrast, see Burnet, His-
tory of his own Times, II, 208 (London, 1818); and Beliquiae Bax-
terianae, part II, 338 (London, 1696).

8 LAURENCE STERNE

debate at the Savoy Conference over a reformed liturgy, was
surprised to find deceit concealed by a face that "look'd so
honestly and gravely and soberly". Although these adverse
opinions of two eminent divines were no doubt coloured by
political and religious dislike, they nevertheless point to a
truth. Eichard Sterne was a conspicuous example among the
clergy of the Restoration whose ideals of church dignity and
ecclesiastical polity had been derived from Archbishop Laud.
To the new age they appeared narrow and bigoted. Like his
famous descendant, the archbishop was also irritable and
hasty in temper, and prone to provoke a quarrel. Edward
Rainbowe, who succeeded him at Carlisle, found the episcopal
palace barely habitable and instituted a suit against him for
dilapidations. "While he held the see of York, Sterne cer-
tainly amassed a fortune, but not, as Burnet charges, wholly
for his own benefit or that of his family. The archbishop's
benefactions were numerous and liberal. From his own
purse he contributed, for example, £1800 towards the rebuild-
ing of St. Paul's Cathedral after the great fire; and some
years before his death he founded, by an annual rent charge
of £60 on his manors in Yorkshire, six scholarships at Cam-
bridge—four at Jesus College and two at Corpus Christi—
for natives of Nottingham and Yorkshire. One of these
scholarships was to come in the course of time to the author
of Tristram Shandy.

The archbishop had married, sometime in middle life, a
woman who was his junior by some years — Elizabeth, daugh-
ter of Edward Dickenson, lord of the manor of Farnborough,
Hampshire, who bore him thirteen children. She died on
March 6, 1673-4, at the age of fifty-eight, while on a visit to
London, and was buried with her family at Farnborough.
At his own death, ten years later, the archbishop divided his
comfortable estates among his three surviving sons.* The
eldest son Richard, to whom fell the largest share, married
and took as his seat Kilvington Hall, near Thirsk and within
the district where Laurence Sterne was eventually to hold
several church livings. He was a justice of the peace and

* The will was signed and sealed on April 14, 1683. — Registry of
Wills at York.

BIBTH AND EDUCATION 9

represented Eipon in one or more Parliaments under Charles
the Second. Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, who passed five
days with him in the coach up to London, found him "very
good company (not so hot as I feared, being the archbishop's
son)".* "William, the second son of the archbishop, besides
inheriting "lands and tenements" at Ryther in the fertile
valley of the Wharfe, was bequeathed five hundred pounds.
He married Frances, daughter of William Cartwright of Nor-
manton, and settled at Mansfield on the estate of his grand-
father. The third son, known as Simon Sterne of Halifax,
received by the terms of his father's will, in lieu of lands,
five hundred pounds outright, three hundred pounds in East
India stock, and a remission of his debts to the archbishop.
This Simon Sterne of Halifax, who seems to have been
improvident in his youth, was the grandfather of Laurence
Sterne.

At this point another strain in the descent of the hu-
mourist becomes of especial interest. Simon Sterne married,
to his great good fortune, Mary Jaques, heiress to a large
estate at Elvington, near York on the river Derwent. Her
grandfather, Sir Roger Jaques, was a prosperous merchant
and alderman of York back in the time of the first Stuarts.
A staunch loyalist in a city where the loyalists predominated,
he rose, in 1639, to the honourable post of Lord Mayor, and
was knighted in that year by King Charles while resting at
York on his way north against the Scots. Roger Jaques had
been aided, no doubt, in his career, gaining thereby social
position as well as wealth, by marrying into the Rawdons, one
of the oldest and richest of the northern families. The Mary
Rawdon whose hand he succeeded in winning, was the
daughter of a certain Laurence Rawdon, who settled at York
during the last years of Elizabeth, and made a fortune in
trade. Her brother was the Marmaduke Rawdon who wrote
an agreeable account of travels in Britain and on the Conti-
nent, t In the glimpses given of her by Marmaduke in his
book, Lady Jaques, as she was always called, appears as a

* Thoresby, Diary, I, 154 (London, 1830).

t Life of Marmaduke Bawdon, edited by Robert Davies for the
Camden Society (London, 1863).

10 LAURENCE STEENE

charming, well-bred woman, who was careful to live in
accordance with her station. She goes up to London with
her husband to see the "rarities", including a visit with a
merry company to the Eoyal Sovereign, a big ship, newly
built and lying down the river; they have an audience with
the king and queen at Greenwich; and thoroughly tired out
with a month's feasting among relatives and friends, Lady
Jaques is glad to get back to Yorkshire once more. During
her last years— she survived her husband— she passed her
time between Elvington and her house on the Pavement, then
one of the fashionable streets at York. She kept a coach
and might be seen on a fine day taking the air in it, accom-
panied by a blackamoor running along by the side. It is
altogether a delightful picture such as one ought to find
somewhere among the ancestors of Laurence Sterne.

The Mary Jaques whom Simon Sterne married was the
granddaughter of this genteel and vivacious Mary Eawdon.
Her brother Koger dying without issue, she succeeded as his
heir to the lordship of Elvington. With £1800 Simon Sterne
purchased Woodhouse, a large estate at Skircoat to the south-
west of Halifax, with an Elizabethan mansion looking across
the beautiful valley of the Calder. Nothing very distinctive
has been gleaned about him. He was a justice of the peace
and governor of a charity for the poor of Halifax. He died
at "Woodhouse Hall, "having undergone a severe salivation
for a cancer in the mouth", and was buried at Halifax on
April 17, 1703. He left three sons and three daughters. To
Richard, the eldest son, born in 1680, descended the estates
at Elvington and "Woodhouse. In the November following
his father's death, Richard married Dorothy, daughter of
Thomas Priestley of Halifax and widow of Samuel Lister
of Shibden Hall, two miles to the northeast of Halifax, where
he resided for several years.. His first wife dying, he married
in 1714 Esther, daughter and heiress of Mr. Timothy Booth
of Halifax. Most fortunate in his marriages, he grew to be
the wealthiest of the Sternes, possessing, besides his inherited
estates, lands at Ovenden and Hipperholme. He bore the
chief hand in reorganising the grammar school at Skircoat
of which the Archbishop of York appointed him one of the

BIBTH AND EDUCATION ±±

governors. He was also a governor of a similar foundation
at Hipperholme. Hot and litigious in temper, he became
involved in several law suits and in a bitter quarrel with the
vicar of his parish, who refused him the Sacrament. He died
suddenly at Bradford on October 9, 1732, while on his way to
York, and was buried at Halifax. He is the uncle who took
in little Laurence at Woodhouse and sent him to school. The
third son of Simon Sterne, named Jaques and born in 1695
or 1696, will enter these memoirs at a later stage, as the
violent Precentor of York who first helped his nephew and
then turned against him in great bitterness. Between
Richard and Jaques, was born, about 1692, Eoger Sterne,
the father of the humourist.*

To Roger Sterne, as a younger brother, there were open
three obvious careers. He might have married, like so many
of his ancestors, an heiress and settled in Yorkshire as a
country gentleman. He might have gone like his brother
Jaques to the university, and have easily secured a place in
the Church within the patronage of some relative or friend of
the f amilj . Finally there was the army. He chose the army
as in more accord, no doubt, with a roving disposition.
Among the crack regiments raised in 1702, on the outbreak
of the war with France and Spain, known in history as the
War of the Spanish Succession, was the Thirty-Fourth or the
Cumberland Regiment of Foot. Its first colonel was Robert,
Lord Lucas, and among the captains was Richard Steele, the
wit and essayist. The men, as one may view them in old plates,
made a smart appearance in their tri-cornered hats, long
scarlet coats richly trimmed with yellow, and white gaiters
reaching above the knees. Under their second colonel, Hans
Hamilton, who succeeded Lord Lucas in 1705, they proved
their mettle in Spain during and after the siege of Barcelona,

* The older pedigrees of the Sterne family have been corrected,
revised, and enlarged in the Publications of the Barleian Society. See
especially in this series Familiae Minorum Gentium, II, 516-17; the
Visitations of Norfolk in 1563 and 1613; and the Visitations of Cam-
bridge in 1575 and 1619. Miscellaneous information is to be found in
the Northowram or Coley Register, edited by J. Horsfall Turner
(London, 1881). None of the pedigrees give the date of birth for
Eoger Sterne ; nor is it contained in the parish registers either at
Halifax or Elvington.

12 LAURENCE STERNE

where they were terribly cut up in a gallant charge against
the French. With the prestige won in Spain, the regiment
returned to England in 1707 to recruit; and the next year
it was ordered north on the alarm of an invasion of Scotland
by the French in favour of the Stuart Pretender. For several
months the Thirty-Fourth was stationed at Leeds, and while
there it may have gained, among its new recruits of 1708,
Koger Sterne, then a mere stripling not more than sixteen
years old. In 1709, the regiment was sent over to the
Netherlands, where it was engaged for some months in gar-
rison duty, owing, says the chronicle,* to the fact that it was
composed mostly of "young soldiers". The next year it joined
the main army of Marlborough. At the siege of Douay, it
was "employed on duty in the trenches, carrying on the ap-
proaches, repulsing the sallies of the garrison, and storming
the outworks", in all of which it repeatedly distinguished
itself. On the conclusion of peace at Utrecht in 1713, the
Thirty-Fourth was withdrawn with other regiments to Eng-
land and soon afterwards it was reduced. But on the up-
rising of the Scots in 1715 under the Earl of Mar, the
regiment was reformed with Thomas Chudleigh as colonel,
who had in fact succeeded Hans Hamilton before the Peace
of Utrecht. Among the new officers appears the name of Boger
Sterne as one of nine ensigns. After varied service in
Ireland, the restored regiment took part in the siege and
capture of Vigo, in various operations in Flanders, and in
the defence of Gibraltar. Under Chudleigh as well as under
Hamilton, the Thirty-Fourth was conspicuous for its bravery
in the field and "its good conduct in quarters".

Notwithstanding his long service, Eoger Sterne attained
to no high place in the army. To the last he seems to have
been only a poor ensign, improvident and good-natured.
He was described by his son, it should be said in passing, as
"Lieutenant in Handaside's regiment", which was the
Twenty-Second. But the statement about his rank as well
as his regiment was likely an error of memory. At the out-
set of his career the ensign made a most unfortunate mar-

* Richard Cannon, Historical Record of the Thirty-Fourth, or The
Cwmberland Begiment of Foot (London, 1844).

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 13

riage. Hitherto the Sternes had for generations allied
themselves with the best families among the minor gentry.
Now entered their blood the taint of commonness and vul-
garity. Following the army in Flanders was "a noted
sutler" named Nuttle, who was father or stepfather— it is
uncertain which— to Agnes Hebert, "widow of a captain of
a good family". Roger Sterne was in debt to Nuttle, and,
to quit the score, he relieved the sutler of further support
of his wife's daughter, by marrying her on September 25,
1711. The story of Roger Sterne and his family subsequent
to this disastrous marriage is related in the brief memoir that
the humourist wrote out for his daughter Lydia. The pathetic
narrative is interwoven with the birth of Laurence and other
children, and with those movements of the regiment which
we have outlined in advance for the sake of clearness.

"This Nuttle", says the memoir, after telling why Roger
Sterne married Agnes Hebert, "had a son by my grand-
mother— a fine person of a man but a graceless whelp— what
became of him I know not. — The family (if any left), live
now at Clonmel in the south of Ireland, at which town I was
born November 24th, 1713, a few days after my mother
arrived from Dunkirk. — My birth-day was ominous to my
poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with many
other brave officers broke, and sent adrift into the wide world
with a wife and two children— the elder of which was Mary ;
she was born in Lisle in French Flanders, July the tenth, one
thousand seven hundred and twelve, New Stile.— This child
was most unfortunate — she married one "Weemans in Dublin
—who used her most unmercifully— spent his substance, be-
came a bankrupt, and left my poor sister to shift for herself,
—which she was able to do but for a few months, for she
went to a friend's house in the country, and died of a broken
heart. She was a most beautiful woman— of a fine figure,
and deserved a better fate.— The regiment, in which my
father served, being broke, he left Ireland as soon as I was
able to be carried, with the rest of his family, and came to
the family seat at Elvington, near York, where his mother
lived. She was daughter to Sir Roger Jaques, and an heiress.
There we sojourned for about ten months, when the regiment

14 LAURENCE STERNE

was established, and our household decamped with bag and
baggage for Dublin— within a month of our arrival, my
father left us, being ordered to Exeter, where, in a sad
winter, my mother and her two children followed him, travel-
ling from Liverpool by land to Plymouth. (Melancholy
description of this journey not necessary to be transmitted
here.) In twelve months we were all sent back to Dublin. —
My mother, with three of us, (for she laid in at Plymouth of
a boy, Joram), took, ship at Bristol, for Ireland, and had a
narrow escape from being cast away by a leak springing up
in the vessel.— At length, after many perils, and struggles,
we got to Dublin.— There my father took a large house, fur-
nished it, and in a year and a half's time spent a great deal

of money.

"In the year one thousand seven hundred and nineteen,
all unhing'd again; the regiment was ordered, with many
others, to the Isle of Wight, in order to embark for Spain in
the Vigo expedition. We accompanied the regiment, and
were driven into Milford Haven, but landed at Bristol, from
thence by land to Plymouth again, and to the Me of Wight —
where I remember we stayed encamped some time before the
embarkation of the troops— (in this expedition from Bristol
to Hampshire we lost poor Joram — a pretty boy, four years
old, of the small-pox), my mother, sister, and myself, remained
at the Isle of Wight during the Vigo Expedition, and until
the regiment had got back to Wieklow in Ireland, from
whence my father sent for us.— We had poor Joram 's loss
supplied during our stay in the Isle of Wight, by the birth
of a girl, Anne, born September the twenty-third, one thou-
sand seven hundred and nineteen.— This pretty blossom fell
at the age of three years, in the barracks of Dublin — she was,
as I well remember, of a fine delicate frame, not made to last
long, as were most of my father's babes.— We embarked for
Dublin, and had all been cast away by a most violent storm •
but through the intercessions of my mother, the captain was
prevailed upon to turn back into Wales, where we stayed a
month, and at length got into Dublin, and travelled by land
to Wieklow, where my father had for some weeks given us
over for lost.— We lived in the barracks at Wieklow, one year

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 15

(one thousand seven hundred and twenty) when Devijeher
(so called after Colonel Devijeher,) was born; from thence
we decamped to stay half a year with Mr. Fetherston, a
clergyman, about seven miles from Wicklow, who being a
relation of my mother's, invited us to his parsonage at
Animo.— It was in this parish, during our stay, that I had
that wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race whilst
the mill was going, and of being taken up unhurt— the story
is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of Ireland—

where hundreds of the common people flocked to see me.

"From hence we followed the regiment to Dublin, where
we lay in the barracks a year. — In this year, one thousand
seven hundred and twenty-one, I learned to write, &c— The
regiment, ordered in twenty-two, to Carrickfergus in the
north of Ireland; we all decamped, but got no further than
Drogheda, thence ordered to Mullengar, forty miles west,
where by Providence we stumbled upon a kind relation, a
collateral descendant from Archbishop Sterne, who' took us
all to his castle and kindly entertained us for a year— and
sent us to the regiment at Carrickfergus, loaded with kind-
nesses, &c— a most rueful and tedious journey had we all, in
March, to Carrickfergus, where we arrived in six or seven
days— little Devijeher here died, he was three years old —
He had been left behind at nurse at a farmhouse near Wick-
low, but was fetch 'd to us by my father the summer after—
another child sent to fill his place, Susan; this babe too left
us behind in this weary journey— The autumn of that year,
or the spring afterwards, (I forget which) my father got leave
of his colonel to fix me at school— which he did near Halifax,
with an able master; with whom I staid some time, 'till by
God's care of me my cousin Sterne, of Elvington, became a
father to me, and sent me to the university, &c. &c. To pur-
sue the thread of our story, my father's regiment was the
year after ordered to Londonderry, where another sister was
brought forth, Catherine, still living, but most unhappily
estranged from me by my uncle's wickedness, and her own
folly— from this station the. regiment was sent to defend
Gibraltar, at the siege, where my father was run through the
body by Captain Phillips, in a duel, (the quarrel begun about

16 LAURENCE STERNE

a goose) with much difficulty he survived— tho' with an im-
paired constitution, which was not able to withstand the
hardships it was put to — for he was sent to Jamaica, [with
his colonel and a part of his regiment] where he soon fell by
the country fever, which took away his senses first, and made
a child of him, and then, in a month or two, walking about
continually without complaining, till the moment he sat
down in an arm chair, and breathed his last— which was at
Port Antonio, on the north of the island."

Of the poor ensign, perhaps just advanced to lieutenant,
who died under circumstances so distressing, far from home
sometime in March 1731, the son retained to the last very
tender recollections. "My father", the narrative goes on to
say, "was a little smart man— active to the last degree, in all
exercises— most patient of fatigue and disappointments, of
which it pleased God to give him full measure— he was in
his temper somewhat rapid, and hasty— but of a kindly, sweet
disposition, void of all design; and so innocent in his own
intentions, that he suspected no one ; so that you might have
cheated him ten times in a day, if nine had not been sufficient
for your purpose." At that time Laurence was still in school
at Halifax and his mother and sister Catherine were living
with friends in Ireland. On the death of her husband, Mrs.
Sterne received a pension of £20 a year, and to add to her
income she afterwards opened an embroidery school. What-
ever may have been her birth, she proved to be, as will be
duly related, an ill-bred woman, with whom none of her
husband's family could associate. But for the moment it is
more agreeable to let the mind rest upon Roger Sterne, from
whom passed to his son the volatile temperament of his race
as we have seen it forming from the archbishop down through
the Rawdons— vivacious, quick to take an affront, and yet
withal most kindly. In the man Who lost his life for a goose
surely lurked a humourist.

Clonmel, the place where Laurence Sterne was born, says
the memoir, on November 24, 1713, is a small Irish town above
Waterford, in the valley of the Suir. His mother had come
there from Dunkirk that her child might be brought forth
among relatives and friends. He was named Laurence it

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 17

would seem, after that distant ancestor we have mentioned—
Laurence Rawdon, sometime merchant and alderman at York
and lord of the manor of Elvington. Hard as were the many-
long journeys and migrations upon the ensign and his wife
during the subsequent ten years, the period must have been
most agreeable to the boy himself. There were for him, who
knew nothing of the tragedy of it, pleasant sojourns in Wales
and in the Isle of Wight, and a whole year in an Irish castle
with kind relatives. When he fell through a mill-race, like
his great-grandfather the archbishop, while the mill was run-
ning, and came out whole and sound, his mother was upset,
to be sure, by the incident ; but to Laurie, as the country folk
crowded about him in wonder at his escape, it was a moment
of triumph; for he was the hero of an incredible adventure.
He must have enjoyed, too, the large freedom of barrack
life in England and in Ireland, however much it may have
tested the endurance of his mother. There he met with new
adventures and strange characters, the memory of which
never left him. In after years, as he sat down in his York-
shire parsonage to write his book, his childhood all came back
to him — what he had seen with his own eyes and what his
father had told him about the first serious engagement of the
Thirty-Fourth Eegiment of Foot in the battle of Wynendale,
which Count de la Motte would have won, "had he not pressed
too speedily into the wood", and about the Peace of Utrecht
which broke my uncle Toby's heart as well as sent Koger
Sterne adrift in the world. Out of those memories, fortified
by much reading of Marlborough's campaigns and enriched
by later observations, came my uncle Toby, Trim, and
Le Fever. Of no one more than of Sterne is the saying of
Wordsworth truer that the child is father to the man.

II

Having learned to read and write while he lay in the
barracks of Dublin, the boy was ready, by 1723 or 1724, for
the rudiments of learning. His father then placed him in
a grammar school near Halifax, that he might be under the
eye of his uncle Richard at Woodhouse Hall. At that time

18 LAURENCE STEBNE

Halifax took the lead in cloth-making among all the towns of
north England. Defoe, who passed through the parish in his
tour of Great Britain, was much struck by the thrift of the
people living in long rows of houses on the hillsides, so
thickly placed as to be within speaking distance of one
another. All along in front of the houses were tenters on
which were stretched pieces of cloth, which, says Defoe, "by
their Whiteness reflecting the bright Rays of the Sun that
played upon them, formed, I thought, the most agreeable
Sight I ever saw".* Sterne is strangely silent in his books
about this and other novel scenes to which he had been sud-
denly transferred. Thrift certainly made upon him no
impression comparable with the gaiety of military life. Per-
haps he chafed under the restraints of his new surroundings.
It is a tradition, supported by an incident or two, that the
boy studied when he liked and got more whippings than
lessons. It may be that he did not get along well with
his uncle at Woodhouse Hall, for he nowhere mentions this
Eichard Sterne among the relatives that aided him. But his
uncle surely gave him shelter and helped pay the expenses of
his schooling. Though Sterne had nothing to say about his
uncle, he spoke with respect of the head of the school,
describing him as "an able master". "Whoever he may have
been, he saw in Sterne a lad of unusual promise; being the
first, as we say nowadays, to discover him. It was not the
master but the usher that did the whipping to which reference
has been made. Sterne himself related the incident, with
some pride, for his daughter Lydia. The master, says
Sterne, "had had the cieling of the school-room new white-
washed— the ladder remained there — I one unlucky day
mounted it, and wrote with a brush in large capital letters,
LAU. STERNE, for which the usher severely whipped me.
My master was very much hurt at this, and said, before me
that never should that name be effaced, for I was a boy of
genius, and he was sure I should come to preferment— this
expression made me forget the stripes I had received."
The name of the school where this escapade occurred

*A Tour through Great Britain, III, 78 (Becond edition, London

BIETH AND EDUCATION 19

Sterne failed to mention. The words of his memoir are
simply "My father got leave of his colonel to fix me at school
—which he did near Halifax, with an able master". At that
time there were, as there are now, two grammar schools near
Halifax — the one at Heath, to the south of Halifax and
within easy walking distance from Woodhouse up over the
moor; the other at Hipperholme, to the east of Halifax and
across the valley from Shibden Hall. The former was an
ancient foundation, with a stately building of freestone, dat-
ing from the fortieth year of Queen Elizabeth. The latter,
a smaller and less pretentious structure, was founded and
endowed in 1661 by Matthew Broadley, Esq., of London,
formerly of Halifax. Both were established for the instruc-
tion of youth in grammar (Latin and Greek) and other
literature and learning, and in all those virtues and good
manners which should be a part of a liberal education. By
express statute, the masters of both schools were required to
be able and sufficient persons, holding at least the degree of
Bachelor of Arts from either Oxford or Cambridge. Of their
scholars, such private records as may have been kept by the
masters have all been lost or destroyed. In which school was
educated the author of Tristram Shandy?

According to common tradition, at least a century old,
Sterne prepared for the university at the Grammar School of
Queen Elizabeth at Heath. A clergyman who attended the
school between 1808 and 1820, said in a letter to a former
master: "The legend during the time that I was at Heath
respecting Sterne was that he was a scholar there, and the
panel on the ceiling was pointed out, on which he was said
to have daubed Lau: Sterne". An inscription similar to
Sterne's, if not the very one, was actually seen and remem-
bered by John Turney of Leek Wotton, in Warwickshire,
who passed the year 1809-10 at Heath. Besides noting the
fact in his copy of Sterne's works, he wrote of it more fully
thirty-odd years back in a letter to a friend. "The name of
Sterne", says the letter, "was marked on the cieling of the
School Room in irregular Characters, as if done by some one
who knew he was doing wrongly and was fearful of being
detected in the Act. They were large Letters, say (I speak

20 LAURENCE STEBNE

from memory of course) about four and a half inches high,
all Capitals. They were black as if, as I thought, burnt in
with a Candle, the smoke from the Candle causing them to be

black. LAU STERNE was inscribed about three yards from

the Head Master's desk. It ran obliquely from S. W. with
rather a turn to the East." The master of Heath in Sterne's
time was a certain Thomas Lister, distantly related to the
Listers of Shibden Hall. He graduated Bachelor in Medi-
cine from Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1688, and received his
appointment to the school in the same year. After forty
years of service, he died in April 1728. On the supposition
that Sterne was a Heath scholar, this, then, was the master
who thought him winged for a higher flight than the rest of
the boys. On the same supposition, the usher who flogged
Laurence, may perhaps be identified with one Abraham
Milner, a young man eighteen or twenty years old, who never
received a degree from either of the great universities, and
afterwards opened a bookseller's shop at Halifax.

The case as thus worked out for Heath, is a complete and
very pretty tale which ought to be true. It really rests,
however, upon nothing but vague tradition. It may all be
a legend that has grown up round the mere fact that the
school was at a convenient distance from the seat of Lau-
rence's uncle. No one, of course, can be disposed to doubt
the memory of the old scholar who could recall the Sterne
inscription on the ceiling. It is, nevertheless, preposterous
to suppose that the original inscription had survived eighty
or more years of whitewash and plaster. What the War-
wickshire gentleman saw and remembered was doubtless the
freak of some boy of later date, who could not find "LAU
STERNE" on the ceiling, and so proceeded to put it there.
To strike more nearly at the heart of the story, the Heath
Grammar School, so flourishing earlier and since, was, just
in Sterne's time, in a wretched condition. It had for some
years been neglected by its governors, who dropped out one
by one until there was nobody qualified to receive rents or
to fill up vacancies ; and its statutes, very strict as one reads
them, had all fallen into abeyance. The master, Thomas
Lister, was described at his death by a Halifax lawyer as an

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 21

"old little good for naught fellow", and by others as long
"superannuated" and never efficient. For at least two years
before his death, his "few petty scholars" were left to the
usher, who was spoken of with equal contempt. Over this
state of affairs Kichard Sterne became hot as early as 1719,
when he reported the mismanagement to the Archbishop of
York, within whose jurisdiction the school lay. After years
of trouble and expense, the squire succeeded in reorganising
the school under a revised charter bearing date July 31, 1729.
A new master, one Christopher Jackson, was appointed in
1730, but he resigned the next year, either because he disliked
his position or because he proved incompetent. By that time
the school days of Laurence Sterne were nearly over. For
two or three of the seven years that Sterne was at school, the
master of Heath was superannuated, and for two more there
was no master at all. It is difficult to imagine that Laurence
could have been among the "few petty scholars" of this
period or that he could have regarded as "an able master"
the man whom another called a "good for naught". It is
much more likely that Thomas Lister, whom, of course, Sterne
saw, knew, and heard talked about at Woodhouse, sat for the
burlesque portrait of that tutor whom Mr. Walter Shandy
would by no means have for his son Tristram. "The gov-
ernor", said Mr. Shandy, "I make choice of shall neither
lisp, or squint, or wink, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish ;
—or bite his lips, or grind his teeth, or speak through his
nose. * * * He shall neither walk fast, — or slow, or fold his
arms,— for that is laziness;— or hang them down,— for that
is folly; or hide them in his pocket, for that is nonsense. —
He shall neither strike, or pinch, or tickle,— or bite, or cut
his nails * * * or snift, or drum with his feet or fingers in
company. ' '

Around the Free Grammar School at Hipperholme has
been elaborated no fanciful legend of Laurence Sterne, per-
haps, as has been indicated, because the school was not so
near to Woodhouse. But it is an unbroken tradition among
the Listers of Shibden Hall that Hipperholme was Sterne's
school. Miss Lister, who was living thirty years ago at an
advanced age, distinctly remembered "her father telling her

22 LAURENCE STEBNE

that Laurence Sterne used to walk to Hipperholme School
from his uncle's house along an ancient foot path which
formerly ran through the yard of Shibden Hall". She said
further that Sterne was "a frequent visitor" at the Hall,
when her grandfather, born in the same year as Sterne, was
a boy. It may be that the aged lady was mistaken. But a
sober statement like hers, bearing none of the marks of fiction,
must be accepted, unless there is evidence to the contrary.
As a matter of fact, Hipperholme exactly fits into what
Sterne said about his school. It was, said Sterne, "near
Halifax". Hipperholme is near Halifax, though not so near
Woodhouse as is Heath. But Sterne did not say "near
"Woodhouse",— that is an added phrase. It was possible for
him to have walked from his uncle's seat to Hipperholme;
for if he could find, as he says in Shandy, no short, cut to
learning, he found one to school through the park of Shibden
Hall. It seems, however, probable that Sterne stayed a good
deal with his friend and schoolmate at Shibden Hall, and he
may have lived in the earlier years— his own words would
bear that interpretation— with the master of Hipperholme,
going to his uncle for the week ends.

During the entire period of Sterne's schooling, the master
of Hipperholme was a Reverend Nathan Sharpe, connected
through the Priestleys with the Listers and with Richard
Sterne, whose first wife was a Priestley. He was graduated
Bachelor in Arts from Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1695, and
was appointed to Hipperholme in 1703, where he remained
till his death thirty years later. A Mr. Sharpe, apparently
this one, baptised in 1704 the first child of Richard Sterne.
Another member of the family, Abraham Sharpe, also a
Cambridge man, whom Richard Sterne addressed as cousin,
held the curacy of Sowerby Bridge near Woodhouse. Besides
being a relative of the master of Hipperholme, Richard Sterne
was also a large landowner in the township and a governor of
the school. Family interests thus point directly to Hipper-
holme as the place where Laurence Sterne acquired the rudi-
ments of learning. When Sterne came to Halifax, Nathan
Sharpe was still in the prime of life, not above forty-eight
years of age. So far as can be determined, he managed his

BIETH AND EDUCATION 23

school well, fulfilling that requirement of the statutes which
Sterne but repeated when he referred to his teacher as "an
able master". Just as Thomas Lister may have been the
original of that schoolmaster whom the elder Shandy could
not think of for his son, so Nathan Sharpe may have fur-
nished hints for the man he was in search of. "I will have
him, continued my father, chearful, facete, jovial; at the
same time, prudent, attentive to business, vigilant, acute,
argute, inventive, quick in resolving doubts and speculative
questions; — he shall be wise, and judicious, and learned:—
And why not humble, and moderate, and gentle-tempered,
* * * said Yorick:" It was certainly a master of this char-
acter who rebuked his usher for whipping Laurence Sterne
and by his praise made the boy forget his punishment.*

After all has been said, there still remains reasonable
doubt as to where Sterne received his early education. The
considerations here set forth in favour of Hipperholme estab-
lish conclusively that Sterne was for a time a scholar there,
and render it highly probable that he was placed there from
the first with the able master who was a friend and relative of
his uncle. But it is possible, though not very probable, that
he first attended Heath for a year or two, until its affairs
reached a crisis, and that he was then transferred to Hipper-
holme. The question could be settled beyond all doubt only
by the registry of the students of the period, but that, if it
ever existed, has not survived. The only document that gives
us a glimpse of Sterne at school is an old exercise book that
once came to the hands of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, from what
source he does not say, bearing the title, Synopsis Com-
munium Locorum ex Poetis Latinis Collecta, written above
the words "Lau. Sterne, September ye 6, 1725". As it bears
in another place the date "1728", if there be no misprint,
one must infer that Sterne remained in the same school
through the period covered by the dates, for he would not
likely be put to the same exercises under different masters.
It also seems a fair inference that if Sterne was ever at

* Local traditions concerning Sterne 's school are contained in
Thomas Cox, A Popular History of the Grammar School of Queen,
Elisabeth, at Heath, near Halifax (Halifax, 1879).

24 LAURENCE STERNE

Heath, he remained for only a short time, migrating to
Hipperholme as early as 1725. The old "dogged eared vol-
ume", as described by Mr. Fitzgerald, shows that Laurence
idled a good deal over his lessons, stopping to play, much like
Shakespeare's schoolboy, over declensions which are made
to include Nickibus Nonkeius and rorum varum. Here and
there occur the names of Sterne's schoolmates, as "John
Turner", "Richard Carr, ejus liber", "Bill Copper", and
"I owe Samuel Thorpe one halfpenny but I will pay him
to-day". Elsewhere it is said that "labour takes panes".
In one place appears a stave of notes with the names written
below and signed "L. S.". Most interesting as a clue to
Sterne's taste then and in after life are the rude drawings
scattered over many of the pages. Mingled with owls, cocks,
and hens, are several heads of women, and curiously dressed
soldiers with sugar-loaf caps, short-stock guns, and straps,
such as he remembered from barrack life. There is "a
drummer", "a piper", and over one "long-nosed, long chinned
face" is written "This is Lorence".*

Notwithstanding the time spent in scribbling over his
copybooks, Sterne then laid the foundation of a ready know-
ledge of the classical literatures. He learned to read and
write Latin with great facility. Nearly all the authors in
the usual curriculum of the period, he at some time quoted
or referred to, evidently from memory. Horace came into
his books perhaps more often than the rest. But Cicero,
Pliny, Hesiod, and Isocrates are there also. Three other
ancients touched his emotions deeply. It grieved him to
think that "poor Ovid" died in exile. In Shandy, he related,
as he remembered it from "Vergil, the scene in the Elysian
Fields where Aeneas meets "the pensive shade of his forsaken
Dido", and added that she still awakened in him "those
affections which were wont to make me mourn for her when
I was at school". Uncle Toby's love for the Iliad, as well as
for chapbooks in which there were soldiers and adventure'
and much fighting, is undoubtedly only a reminiscence of
Sterne's own passion for them. If we may have it so the
boy purchased with his own pocket money "Guy of War-

* Fitzgerald, Life of Sterne, I, 9-10 (London, 1896).

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 25

wick", "Valentine and Orson", "The Seven Champions of
Christendom", and handed them round among his school
companions. And of the "Iliad", he says: "Was I not as
much concerned for the destruction of the Greeks and Trojans
as any boy of the whole school? Had I not three strokes of
a ferula given me, two on my right hand, and one on my left,
for calling Helena a b * * * * for it? Did any one of you
shed more tears for Hector? And when king Priam came to
the camp to beg his body, and returned weeping back to Troy

without it, you know, brother, I could not eat my dinner. ' '

In all this Sterne doubtless carried back to his school days
much of his maturer sentiment; and yet it may be fairly in-
ferred that the characters in the books he read at school were
real persons to him in whose adventures he took an active and
sympathetic part beyond the habit of most boys. This love
for ancient literature was quite sufficient for the master's
prophecy, after the whipping, that Laurence possessed talents
that would bring him to preferment.

Between school and university intervened for Sterne a
period of uncertainty. By 1731 at the latest he should have
been ready for Cambridge. But just at this time news
reached him of his father's death in the West Indies; and
the boy, then in his eighteenth year, was left "without one
shilling in the world". His mother in much distress came
over from Ireland; and after scant courtesy from her hus-
band's relatives, she returned to Clonmel with her pension
of £20, barely sufficient for the support of herself and
Catherine, whom she kept with her. Any aid to her son was
out of the question. The next year his uncle Richard, "being
somewhat infirm in body", started for York and fell dead
at Bradford. By his will signed and sealed* a few weeks
before his death, Richard Sterne bequeathed his royalty and
estate at Elvington and all his estates at Ovenden, Halifax,
and Hipperholme to his eldest son Richard by Dorothy Lister ;
and to a younger son Timothy by Esther Booth, were be-
queathed Woodhouse and all his lands within the parish of
Skircoat. Timothy, then only a boy, afterwards married and

* Signed September 11, and proved October 25, 1732.— .York Registry
of Wills.

26 LAURENCE STEENE

settled at Woodhouse Hall, where, surrounded by horses and
dogs, he developed into a squire of the kind one may read
about in Addison and Fielding. Laurence never mentioned
Timothy, probably because he was under no obligation to him.
Eichard, the eldest son and chief heir, barely twenty-five
years old at his father's death, also soon married and took up
his residence at Elvington. Between Richard and Laurence
there must have been much in common, for the humourist,
in spite of differences that sprang up later in life, always
spoke with respect and affection of his cousin at Elvington.
He became, said Sterne in reviewing his career, "a father to
me"; to his protection "I chiefly owe what I now am"; and
but for his aid, "I should have been driven out naked into
the world, young as I was, and to have shifted for myself as
well as I could".

The substantial service for which Sterne expressed this
profound gratitude was an allowance of £30 a year towards
his expenses at the university. After drifting about for
several months, he went up to Cambridge, says the memoir,
in 1732, but the date is clearly a slip in memory by a full
year. He was enrolled, according to the record of it, as a
sizar at Jesus College on July 6, 1733. The choice of this
college out of all others at Cambridge was most natural, for
his uncle Jaques and his master at Halifax, whether Mr.
Sharpe or Mr. Lister, were both educated there; and his
great-grandfather, Archbishop Sterne, had been one of its
masters and generous benefactors. As in everything else
connected with Sterne some fact or incident will appear out
of the usual order, so it is with the official records of him at
Cambridge. Fashioned himself unlike other men, it is as if
all who had to do with him, whether closely or at a distance
were infected by his own strange courses. In his day sizars
were admitted to Jesus College and elsewhere only after
"being examined and approved". Examinatus et approbatus
is the stereotyped formula. But no examination was required
of Sterne. 'He was. admitted "in his absence", reads the
entry, "with the assent of Master and Fellows". Moreover
the official who enrolled him put down his name as Henry
instead of Laurence, and described him as a native of York

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 27

either by mistake or by the direction of the master. The
next year— on July 30, 1734— Sterne, then in residence, was
elected, after being duly sworn, to one of the scholarships
founded by his great-grandfather "for natives of Yorkshire
and Nottingham", though, as he was born in Ireland, he did
not possess the necessary qualifications. Of these curious
irregularities, the readiest explanation is that before Laurence
was entered at Cambridge, his cousin Kichard of Elvington
had come to some agreement with the Master of Jesus, whereby
all technicalities relative to birth-place and examination were
to be waived in consideration of the young man's descent
from Archbishop Sterne. The boy could not have been
accorded greater favours had he been the son of a nobleman.
For some reason— perhaps because of the fee — Sterne de-
ferred matriculation in the university until March 29, 1735,
nearly two years after he came into residence.

The Master of Jesus was Charles Ashton, a quiet scholar
known for his studies in classical and patristic literature.
Among the learned fellows Sterne had as his first tutor
Charles Cannon, a young man about thirty years old. Cannon
died in the winter of 1734-5 and Sterne was then transferred
to John Bradshaw, a fellow some six years older, who guided
him through the rest of the course and recommended him for
his degree. Associated with Sterne under his second tutor
were a certain Thomas Mould, a Peter Tomiano, who failed
to take a degree, and Frederick Keller, who became a dis-
tinguished fellow of his college and the literary executor
of Dr. Ashton. "Whether any unusual friendship existed
between Sterne and Keller is not known ; but it is interesting
to observe in passing that the two men were prepared for
their examinations by the same tutor.

Sterne, with his family pride, could not have been fully at
ease in his position in the university. Sizars, to be sure,
then performed no menial services at Cambridge; the time
was past when they were required, as Eachard complains, to
fetch water, sweep chambers, and make beds for their
superiors; and the line was no longer fast drawn between
them and the pensioners and fellow-commoners above them.
There were nevertheless social and other distinctions which

28 LAURENCE STERNE

would be felt and resented by a sensitive nature. With no
tassels to their caps, unlucky sizars wore in clear view the
badge of poverty. Sterne's allowance, from his cousin, with
the £10 a year that he received from his scholarship, sufficed
no more than for the essentials of maintenance and clothing.
Gentlemen then commonly spent thrice that sum. Without
running into debt there could have been for Sterne no
luxuries nor suppers and wine parties, such as were expected
of youngsters from good families. Under the circumstances
Sterne did exactly as one would expect of him : he borrowed
money, from what source he does not say, and sought con-
genial companions here and there among the men who, in the
university scale, ranked socially above him. The names of
but two of these friends have escaped oblivion. One was
John Fountayne of Melton Manor, South Yorkshire, who was
enrolled at St. Catharine's Hall. He was afterwards elected
Dean of York and then he and Sterne were again placed in
very intimate relations. Each, as will be duly related, came
to the aid of the other in a noisy church quarrel which gave
Sterne local reputation for a smart and witty pen. The
other friend was John Hall, who some years later added
Stevenson to his name and inherited Skelton Castle, over on
the Yorkshire coast near Saltburn-by-the-Sea. He is the
"dear cousin Antony" of numerous letters and the discreet
Eugenius of Tristram Shandy, who warns Yorick against
"unwary pleasantry", lest it bring him into "scrapes and
difficulties" out of which no after-wit can extricate him.
Five years younger than Sterne, Hall-Stevenson entered
Jesus College as a fellow-commoner in 1735. Though the
two men were together at Cambridge for only a year and a
half, that time was long enough for a close friendship "which
ever after * * * continued one and indivisible through life".
Hall-Stevenson was, as described by one who recollected
him at college, "an ingenious young gentleman and in person
very handsome". And so he appears in the fine portrait of
him in velvet and lace that still hangs at Skelton. He was
also an idler and decadent much given to the perusal of
Rabelais and other facetious books in the French tongue.
To Hall-Stevenson, Sterne was undoubtedly indebted for hia

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 29

first acquaintance with the great master of French humour.
The two young men used to sit together under the large
walnut tree that shaded the inner court of Jesus College,
not we may be sure "to study", as the York anecdotist relates
it, but to read the common lounging-books, which in those
days included, among others besides Rabelais, Joe Miller's
Jests, Mrs. Behn's novels, Lord Rochester's poems, and the
plays of Wycherley and Congreve. This old walnut tree
they aptly called the Tree of Knowledge, inasmuch as they
learned of good and evil while resting beneath its shadow.

Sterne's associations with Hall-Stevenson would seem to
be ample warrant for the tradition that he "was careless
and inattentive to his book", that is, to the prescribed studies;
that "he laughed a great deal, and sometimes took the
diversion of puzzling his tutors". But such a summary in
a phrase or two is inexact and incomplete. Sterne's main
quarrel with the learned society of fellows and tutors of
Jesus College, as set forth in Tristram Shandy, was that they
were mere men of reading, who with their slight knowledge
of the world thought that "wisdom can speak in no other
language than Greek and Latin". "There is a husk and
shell", he said of pedagogues, preceptors, tutors and gerund-
grinders, "which grows up with learning, which their unskil-
fulness knows not how to fling away". But among these
unskilled scholars he did not include without reserve his own
tutors, one or both of whom he took pains to describe as
"worthy". The ancient poets and historians that Sterne
read under the guidance of these men, he always mentioned
and quoted with delight. Homer and Vergil, which were
continued at college, he never tired of. Theocritus and
Pindar charmed him for "the sweetness of the numbers"
and "the musical placing of the words". Of the historians
he liked best Thucydides, Herodotus, and Livy; while his
praise of Tacitus was rather measured. The decisive style
of Tacitus, he thought, overshot the mark, outwitting both
author and reader. Eloquence, wherever found, always ap-
pealed to Sterne strongly. But when he came to the dry
bones of literary theory, rhetoric, logic, and metaphysics, he
was simply amused that intellect should employ itself in that

30 LAURENCE STEBNE

way. All these studies, which entered largely into the cur-
riculum, he turned in aftertime to banter and gay ridicule.
The only rhetorician that he ever praised freely is Longinus,
whom he declared "the best critic the eastern world ever
produced". That admiration was based, it is quite clear, not
so much upon the real worth of what Longinus wrote as upon
his grand style. All the rest were his game. Near the open-
ing of Tristram Shandy he begins his sport with those direc-
tions to writers which Horace laid down in the Art of Poetry.
"I shall" — says Sterne there, shifting the figurative meaning
of the phrase to the literal — "I shall start out, as Mr. Horace
would have me, ab ovo; but beyond that I shall follow no
rules of the ancients." Later on he has a fling at the Latin
translation of Aristotle's Poetics which he read at college,
explaining in lively banter the various parts of a drama —
protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe or peripetia — which
grow out of one another in the order the critic first planted
them, and "without which a tale had better never be told
at all".

Perhaps Sterne overflows most in ridicule when he turns
to logic. In his day the students at Cambridge were sup--
posed to read the Latin manual on logic written by Francis
Burgersdicius, sometime professor at Leyden, and the Dutch
commentators thereon. Formal logic also then pervaded the
instruction not only in mathematics but also in physics and
moral philosophy. Sterne evidently had great contempt for
the exercises wherein he was required to defend or oppose
according to the stiff and rigid rules of logic a thesis drawn
from one of these subjects. The academical dispute seemed
to him only an adroit manipulation of words and phrases.
This attitude of his towards logic is summed up in the char-
acter and sayings of the elder Shandy, in whom nature
blended her own rhetoric and logic without the aid of the
schools. "When the country squire— in an imaginary scene,
which may have a faint counterpart in a visit of his own with
his uncle or cousin Richard— went up to Cambridge to enter
his son at Jesus College, the fellows and tutors whom he met
there could not understand how a man that had never heard
a single lecture on the Dutch logicians should be able to talk

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 31

and reason as cleverly as themselves. The squire seemed to be
aware, as well as the respondents and opponents whom they
trained for the public acts, that a disputant should aim, not
to convince, but to silence the man against him. It was
known to him, as well as to Burgersdicius and his disciples,
that "every thesis and hypothesis have an offspring of propo-
sitions; and each proposition has its own consequences and
conclusions ; every one of which leads the mind on again into
fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings". Mr. Shandy was
also afflicted, just as were they, with "the commonplace
infirmity of the greatest mathematicians", who work "with
might and main at the demonstration, and so wasting all
their strength upon it, * * * have none left in them to draw
the corollary, to do good with".

It was the opinion of Mr. Shandy that the English school-
boy began his studies too late and was kept at them too long.
Listen to the squire as he enumerates to a company gathered
at Shandy Hall the stages that Sterne himself passed through
from the cradle to the Bachelor's degree:
"Five years with a bib under his chin;
"Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to
Malachi ;

"A year and a half in learning to write his own name;
"Seven long years and more TwrT<o-ing it, at Greek and
Latin;

"Four years at his probations and his negations— the fine
statue still lying in' the middle of the marble block, — and
nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out !— 'Tis a
piteous delay !— Was not the great Julius Scaliger within an
ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all? Forty-
four years old was he before he could manage his Greek; —
and Peter Damianus, lord bishop of Ostia, as all the world
knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man 's estate.
— And Baldus himself, as eminent as he turned out after,
entered upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined
he intended to be an advocate in the other world : no wonder,
when Eudamidas, the son of Archidamas, heard Xenocrates
at seventy-five disputing about wisdom, that he asked gravely,

32 LAUEENCE STERNE

—If the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning
wisdom,— what time will he have to make use of it?"

Mr. Shandy would have none of this delay in the educa-
tion of his son Tristram, and so set about to discover "a
North-west passage to the intellectual world". He found it
in a running dance with the auxiliary verbs. By conjugat-
ing have, do, shall, will, etc., with a variety of nouns and
pronouns, affirmatively, negatively, interrogatively, and hypo-
thetically, it was shown conclusively that a young gentlemen
might be taught in a few lessons "to discourse with plaus-
ibility upon any subject, pro and con, and to say and write
all that could be spoken or written concerning it, without
blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld him".
This is the key to all knowledge, the ars magna, says Sterne,
that Raymond Lully and numerous scholastics have long
sought for in vain. Once in the secret of it, a man may talk
on forever about things and entities whereof he knows noth-
ing. The great art was especially commended by Sterne to
college tutors whose business it might be to provide topics in
logic for the young gentlemen who come under their charge.
He could assure them to a certainty that there was nothing
like the use of the auxiliaries for setting "the soul a-going
by herself upon the materials as they are brought to her".
"By the versability of this great engine, round which they
are twisted", may be opened, he declared, "new tracks of
enquiry", and every idea be made to "engender millions".

The light of a new age in science and speculation was
beginning to break upon Cambridge while Sterne was there.
For some time Newton, Hobbes, Locke, and various modern
historians and publicists had formed part of the usual course
of reading.* To these writers Sterne took strong likes and
dislikes. Pufendorf 's immense work on the Law of Nature
was not forgotten by the humourist when he came to describe
in Tristram Shandy the incontestable rights of the Homun-
culus which the eminent jurist had forgotten to enumerate.

*For the reading prescribed and recommended at Cambridse in
Sterne's time, see Christopher Wordsworth, Scholae Academicae (Cam
bridge, 1877). Compare with Sterne, John Eachard's burlesque of
the university curriculum in The Grounds and Occasions of the Con
tempt of the Clergy (London, 1670, reprinted in Arber's English Gar-
nert VII). w

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 33

Cliiver, the German historian and geographer, he regarded
as a pedant, who spent his time in trying to ascertain where
the Goths and other Germanic tribes were first seated and so
had nothing to say about their manners and customs. Why,
asks Sterne in Tristram Shandy, did not "the learned
Cluverius" mention in his Germania Antiqua, the wise
custom among the Goths "of debating every thing of im-
portance to their state, twice ; that is, — once drunk, and once
sober: — Drunk — that their councils might not want vigor; —
and sober— that they might not want discretion". That
story, Sterne would say, is more interesting than the geogra-
phy of the country between the Vistula and the Oder. On
the other hand Sterne admired Newton at a distance. Of
Hobbes he knew enough to allude to that quaint title-page of
the Leviathan whereon is depicted graphically the horns of a
dilemma, upon which hang syllogisms of various sorts while
masters and students stand about in their gowns. Finally,
Sterne could never cease praising the author of the Essay on
the Human Understanding. After all his wanderings in
logic and metaphysics, he discovered in the great Locke, the
sagacious Locke, a writer who really knew what passes in a
man's mind, and one whose search was ever after truth, not
after adroit and dishonest means for defending propositions
that every one knows must be false. The famous essay
became Sterne's companion to the end of life and coloured
much of his own thinking.

Sterne received his degrees from Jesus College in due
course, graduating B.A. in January 1736-7 and M.A. at
commencement in July 1740. When he appeared for his first
degree he could not have been included— needless to say per-
haps—among "the hard reading men" of the type of
Frederick Keller. But he had read, as we have seen, the
books that he was expected to know; and they were tucked
away in memory ready for his purposes when needed. An
old anecdotist likely guessed the truth, if he had no authority
for the statement, when he said that Sterne had a way of
puzzling his tutors. But it was, we may be sure, only the
good natured banter of a man "who loved a jest in his heart".
We miss greatly some authentic account of the impression

3

34 LAURENCE STERNE

that Sterne made upon his tutors and associates. On this
point there is nothing beyond what was current thirty years
after. It was then said that "Sterne left Cambridge with
the character of an odd man, that had no harm in him;
and who had parts if he would use them". A portrait of a
beautiful youth by Allan Kamsay, believed to be Sterne at the
age of twenty-seven, when he came up for his Master's degree,
now hangs, as was said earlier, near Coleridge, in the hall
of Jesus College. It is an oval face in the freshness
of youth, such as Sterne himself admired, with full eyes
and full lips, but hardly suggestive of the humour that
was in him.

Sterne was destined for the Church, not because of
deep and peculiar piety but because the Church was an
obvious career to one who bore his name. In that way
awaited him a livelihood and the preferment which his master
had prophesied for him while at school. His immediate
prospects, however, were far from bright. He began the
world, as he often said, with "many difficulties and draw-
backs". All along his family had looked upon him as the son
of his mother rather than of his father. The annual stipend of
£30 from his cousin Kichard, inadequate at best, was paid
irregularly, and not at all during his last year at Cambridge.
So Sterne was compelled to borrow money elsewhere to
settle his university debts. The expense of his food and
clothing for the nine years at the Halifax grammar school
was also charged up, he was now to discover, against him to
be paid as soon as he should be able. From the first he had
been a delicate boy like most of his father's children who had
been left by the way one after another. In stature above mid-
dle height, he was slim and hollow-chested. A dread disease
lurking in his blood became manifest near the close of his
residence at Cambridge. One night he was startled out of
sleep by a hemorrhage of the lungs, "bleeding", he says,
"the bed full". Fortunately, Sterne possessed a buoyant
nature which could win the race against debts and con-
sumption.*

* The following are the original entries relative to Sterne in the
register of Jesus College:
Under July 6, 1733:

BIRTH AND EDUCATION 35

Henricus Sterne Eboracensis absens admissus est in Ordinem Siza-
torum cum consensu Magistri & Sociorum sub Tutore suo M>o Cannon.

Under July 30, 1734:

Laurentius Sterne electus est et admissus, prius juratus, Exhibi-
tionarius Episcopi Eboracensis in locum Dai Hall.

Under January 14, 1736-7:

Eodem etiam die Eredericus Keller, Petrus Tomiano, Laurence
Sterne & Thomas Mould habuerunt veniam sibi concessam petendi
gratiam ab Academia ad respondendum Quaestioni, spondente Mro
Bradshaw.

Under August 4, 1737:

Literae Testimoniales concessae sunt Dno Sterne.

Henricus in the first entry was afterwards deleted for Laurentius;
Arch was also written before Episcopi in the second entry. Arch, of
course, should be Archi. Mro is an abbreviation for Magistro; and
Dm an abbreviation for Domini.

"The Ramsay portrait," writes Mr. Arthur Gray, Vice-Master of
Jesus College, "was presented to the college by one of the Fellows, Mr.
Hugh Shield, A. C, a few years ago. It is traditionally and, I believe,
correctly said to be a portrait of Sterne in his youth and is unquestion-
ably by Allan Ramsay."

CHAPTER II

MARRIAGE AND SETTLEMENT AT SUTTON-ON-THE-

POREST

1737-1744

After obtaining his Bachelor 's degree, Sterne immediately
entered upon his career in the Church. On Sunday, March 6,
he was duly admitted, among other candidates, to the order of
deacons by Richard Reynolds, the Bishop of Lincoln, "being
very well recommended", according to the customary formula,
' ' for his exemplary Life, good Morals and virtuous qualities,
and well instructed in the Study and knowledge of Sound
Learning". The scene of this general ordination was the
chapel of Buckden Hall near Huntingdon, long since in
ruins, but then the palatial residence of the diocese. On the
same day, Sterne was licensed by the Bishop of Lincoln to
the curacy of St. Ives, five miles to the east of Huntingdon.

St. Ives is an ancient market-town, which then consisted
mainly of a single row of houses straggling along the north-
eastern bank of the slow-moving Ouse. In the rear was a
cattle market, and beyond were farms extending out into the
fens, one of which, "a stagnant flat tract of land", was culti-
vated for five years by Oliver Cromwell. It was, too, as a
representative of St. Ives, that Bulwer-Lytton the novelist
obtained his first seat in Parliament. And now to its asso-
ciations may be added the name of Laurence Sterne, who there
began the cure of souls. All Saints, where Sterne officiated, is
a light and handsome church in the perpendicular style, over-
looking the sleepy stream, with a lofty spire visible for miles
out over the fens. Sterne came to the parish as curate to the
vicar, one William Pigott, a graduate of Pembroke College,
Cambridge. Perhaps the two men had been acquainted at
the university, for the vicar did not receive his Master's
degree until 1734. But of this we do not know. No memorials

36

Laurence Sterne
From a painting by Bamsay at Jesus College, Cambridge

MARKtAGE AND SETTLEMENT 37

of the young curate of St. Ives longer exist; no entry of his
in the parish registry; no tradition of him and his ways.
Nothing remains but the bare record of his appointment in
the Act Book of the Bishop of Lincoln. At most Sterne
trod the flagstones of the ancient church at St. Ives for a
year and a half and then passed out to new scenes.

In the meantime, an important change had taken place in
the attitude of the Sterne family towards the young man.
His cousin Kichard apparently broke with him over college
debts and soon died before reaching middle life. His uncle
Jaques, who had hitherto refused absolutely to aid him, now
became his patron and gave him a good start in the world,
as he well could from his position in the Church of York.
This Jaques Sterne, before our memoir has finally done with
him, will turn out to be a splendid example, equal to any in
Trollope's novels, of the worldly-wise ecclesiastic who strives
for high place solely for his own comfort and aggrandisement.
Without possessing the solid character of the old archbishop
bearing the family name, he was proud, blustering, and
bigoted, and withal totally devoid of humour.

Graduating from Jesus College, Bachelor of Arts in 1714,
and Master of Arts in 1718, Jaques Sterne was ordained to the
ministry in December 1720 at Bishopthorpe, the palace of the
Archbishop of York. On February 5, 1722, he was instituted
Vicar of Rise, a small parish near the coast in the East Riding
of Yorkshire, to which living was added on May 3, 1729, the
neighbouring vicarage of Hornsea-cum-Riston. A month
before this last appointment — on April 3, 1729— he was in-
stalled Prebendary of Apesthorpe in York Minster, and
was permitted the next year to exchange this prebend for
Ulskelf. Accompanying his rise, in no way unusual up to
this point, Jaques Sterne had received in 1725 the degree of
Doctor of Laws from his college. He was henceforth to be
known as Dr. Sterne, a title by which he liked to be called.
Having once gained a foothold in the Church of York, Dr.
Sterne added one dignity to another, never letting slip any
that he already had except for something better. In April
1734 the eager pluralist was preferred to the rich prebend
for South Muskham in the Cathedral Church of Southwell,

38 LAURENCE STERNE

Nottinghamshire, which brought his annual income well above
four hundred pounds. At the time of the appointment, he
was too busy at York to appear in person at Southwell, and
so the installation was by proxy. He was then in the midst
of a fierce parliamentary contest, in which he won the day
for the Whig candidate, Mr. Cholmley Turner, whose canvass
he personally managed. After this brilliant success against
the most stubborn and bitter opposition, Dr. Sterne easily
took his place among those efficient church politicians of
the period who were fighting the Whig battles for Walpole.
Resigning the prebend of Ulskelf, he was appointed, on the
seventeenth of November of the next year, Canon Residentiary
and Precentor to York Minster, and Archdeacon of Cleve-
land. There was nothing further for him to ask for at
present except a bishopric, but that could not be granted
him.*

The motives that led Dr. Sterne to take up his nephew
after years of neglect, one need not go far to seek. Laurence
was no longer a helpless child of doubtful parentage whose
education would be a drain upon the purse. He had made
his way through the university, thereby displaying the Sterne
energy and talents and proving himself the son of Roger
Sterne rather than of a poor woman who followed the army
in Flanders. No doubt Jaques Sterne thought it his duty to
help along a member of his family who might come to some-
thing; but it is clear, in the light of subsequent events, that
he mainly sought in his nephew a subservient tool for fur-
thering his own ambitions. Clever politician as he was, he
would first make him and then use him as an understrapper.
What happened when the young man thoroughly understood
this, would be, I dare say, interesting reading, if only we had
the full details of the encounter. But all that, with the few
details we have, is for a later story. Peace reigned for some
years. Pursuant to the plans agreed upon by uncle and
nephew, Laurence Sterne, having left St. Ives, was admitted
to the priesthood, by Samuel Peploe, Bishop of Chester, at a

* For Jaques Sterne, see especially Le Neve and Hardy Fasti
Ecclesiae AngUcanae (Oxford, 1854) ; and G. Paulson. History of
Eolderness (Hull, 1890).

MARBIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 39

special ordination held in the Cathedral Church of Chester,
on Sunday August 20, 1738. Pour days later Lancelot Blaek-
burne, the Archbishop of York, conferred upon him the vicar-
age of Sutton-on-the-Porest, within the archdeaconry of
Cleveland. The next day he was formally inducted into the
living by Eichard Musgrave, the curate of Marton, with
Philip Harland, the squire of the parish, as one of the
witnesses.*

Sutton-on-the-Forest is a small village eight miles or more
to the north of the city of York. As one comes upon the
hamlet from York, the road suddenly turns to the right,
running almost due east. On the north side stood, as it now
stands, the little stone church with square tower, dedicated to
All Saints, and beyond was the parsonage hidden away among
shrubbery. Prom his gate, Sterne looked directly across
upon the grange of Squire Harland, while on either side of
the road was a row of cottages with small enclosures ; and in
various directions lanes led away to scattered farmsteads.
The vicarage, which included the entire township of Sutton
and of Huby to the west, extended over an area of nearly
eleven thousand acres. It had formerly been known as Sut-
ton-in-Galtres, for it lay at the heart of the immense Forest
of Galtres, which stretched north to the ancient Isurium and
south to the very walls of York. For centuries a royal hunt-
ing ground wherein the old kings "pursued the wild boar,
the wolf, and other beasts of prey with which it was in-
fested", the ancient forest is now chiefly remembered, outside
of local history, as the scene where Shakespeare's John of
Lancaster met the northern rebels under Richard Scroop,
Archbishop of York, and after persuading him to disband
his power, treacherously broke faith with him, ordering his
arrest and immediate execution. "It was", says Thomas
Gill's Vallis Eboracensis, "in many places thick and shady
with lofty trees and underwood, and in others wet and flat,
full of bogs and moorish quagmires". In 1670 Parliament

* All of Sterne 's ordination papers with endorsements now repose
in the British Museum. {Additional Charters, 16158-66). The in-
formation contained in these papers has been supplemented by an
examination of the Institutions of the Diocese of York and the Acts of
the Dean and Chapter.

40 LAURENCE STERNE

passed an act for enclosing this wild waste ; whereupon began
those changes and improvements which have since converted
Galtres into a rich and fruitful plain of meadows and pas-
tures. In Sterne's time this transformation was not com-
plete. Much of the forest had been levelled, meadows had
been drained, and bogs had been filled up, but there yet
remained many fields and large tracts of common land that
had not been brought under the plough. If no longer in the
forest, the hamlet of Sutton still lay within one of its old
clearings which ran off in all directions into barren moors
and marshes with woods beyond.

The only attraction which this parish in the wilderness
could have had for Sterne was the £40 a year that it put into
his purse. He probably never expected to go into permanent
residence. For the next three years he stayed mostly at
York, it would seem, driving out to Sutton sometimes for
Sunday service and the business of his parish. On one of
these occasions, the vicar took down the parish registry, and,
before entering a marriage or baptism, sprawled in large
letters across the page LAUBBNCB STERNE, much as he had
done on the ceiling of the Halifax grammar school. The first
entry in his hand, it may be interesting to note, was the
marriage of John Newstead of Huby and Mary Wilkinson of
Stillington, on Easter Tuesday, Anno Domini 1739. But
most of the records for this year, and all of them, I think, for
1740 are signed by Richard Wilkinson, a young man in
deacon's orders, whom Sterne placed over the parish. Mr.
Wilkinson was at Sutton on a slightly irregular appointment,
merely as Sterne's assistant, for his license to the cure bears
the date of December 17, 1740. His parish duties provided
for, Sterne likely kept close to York, by the source of eccle-
siastical preferment. Vacancies were then filled so promptly
that candidates unless near at hand stood no chance of win-
ning. On January 12, 1740-1, the prebend of Givendale in
York Cathedral was resigned by the incumbent for the
chancellorship, and five days later Sterne was in possession of
the stall. Thenceforth he became a member of the York
Chapter and took his turns at preaching in the great minster.
"He sat down quietly", says the contemporary account, "in

t MABBIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 41

the lap of the church ; and if it was not yet covered, with a
fringed cushion, 'twas not naked."

At that time York was in truth as in name the metropolis
of the north. Many country gentlemen made it their resi-
dence the year through, while others came in for the winter
with their families. Provisions of all sorts were cheap and
plentiful and hospitality abounded. Those who could not
afford houses of their own went into lodgings or put up at
one of the inns, of which the George in Coney Street was the
meeting place of gentlemen to talk politics, confer with their
lawyers, make and sign contracts, and nominate for mayor or
member of Parliament. Nearby was Sunton's Coffee-House,
one of several coffee-houses at York, and Sterne's favourite
resort for gossip or a convivial evening with the club to which
he belonged. During the season, which began in November,
there were, says Defoe, who included York in one of his tours,
"assemblies, music-meetings or some entertainment every
night in the week"; while for a week in May and August a
.concourse of people, including the neighbouring and distant
nobility and gentry, poured into the city from all sides for
the amusements of "the great races", held on the field of
Knavesmire, then one of the best courses in England. Chance
visitors at the races in Sterne's day were amazed at the pro-
digious sums lost and won or left behind for lodgings, the
theatre, and subscription balls. For those who required
greater excitement than watching Antelope and Grenadier*
run for his Majesty's purse of a hundred guineas, there was
provided, twice a day during the week of the races and fre-
quently at other times, a main of cocks with bye-battles, t
between the gentlemen of York and the gentlemen of Halifax,
Bradford, or some other respectable town of the north.

York had also her own company of players, chosen with
a "particular care * * * to their private life that they
might be as sociable off the stage, as entertaining upon it".
They had long performed in one of the cockpits, but by the
time Sterne came to York, they were moving into their
theatre in the Mint Yard, modelled after those of London.

* York Cowrant, August 11, 1752.
t Ibid. August 13, 1751.

42 LAUEENCE STEENE

There Sterne had an opportunity to see the whole range of
the English drama from Shakespeare and Jonson down to a
comic opera founded upon local scene and character.* And
not far from the theatre were the Assembly Rooms, the very
centre of fashion. The building, which was designed after
Palladio by that Earl of Burlington to whom Pope and Gay
paid generous compliment, was then regarded as very beau-
tiful, though it now appears heavy and dingy enough. It
contained a spacious and showy hall ornamented in the
antique Egyptian manner, and six other rooms, all of which,
writes Defoe, were "finely illuminated with lustres of an
extraordinary size and magnificence ".t To visitors of more
sentiment than Defoe the overhanging lights on the evening
of a concert or ball but revealed the brilliant scene below.
"The ladies", said a correspondent of St. James's Chronicle,%
"who vied in splendour with each other, I thought would never
be tired of dancing, for some began on Monday and continued
till Saturday night." And so it was at the theatre. Tate
"Wilkinson, the actor and mimic, who at a later date some-
times played at York, was dazzled, he says, when his eyes
turned towards the boxes; "and no wonder", it is added in
explanation, "for as London and Bath cull the choicest
beauties from the three kingdoms, so does ancient York city
at times allure them from Hull, Leeds, Doncaster, Wakefield,
Pontefract, and every part of that noble, spacious and rich
country".|| It is quite easy to see why a young bachelor should
have preferred York to a country parish tucked away in a
forest clearing.

Among the young women with whom Sterne held senti-
mental converse at the Assembly Rooms and elsewhere was
Miss Elizabeth Lumley, who was accustomed to come to York
for the season. As Sterne eventually took Miss Lumley to
wife, we should tell what may be gleaned of her and her
kindred. When he first made her acquaintance, she was
occupying genteel lodgings, with her waiting-maid, in Little
Alice Lane, a narrow street which under another name still

* York Courant under various dates.

t Tour of Great Britain, III, 125-26 (London, 1738)

} August 26-28, 1766.

|| Memoirs, III, 144-45 (York, 1790).

MABEIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 43

winds away from the south of the Minster Yard to an arch-
way marking one of the old gates to the Cathedral Close.
Most of the buildings of the street were pulled down a half
century ago ; but the house where Miss Lumley was wont to
take lodgings for the winter may perhaps be identified with
St. "William's College, originally an ecclesiastical foundation
for chantry priests, and afterwards converted into dwellings.
It is an ancient and curious structure rambling around a
court-yard ; while in front a half-timbered upper storey pro-
jects over one of stone into the street. The main entrance
was by a door and wicket ornamented with beautiful tracery.
It is a pleasing fancy, if nothing more, that Miss Lumley
passed through that traceried doorway on the morning when
she stepped over to the cathedral to become Mrs. Sterne.
She could not boast, if casual references to her are to be
believed, of the beauty that Tate Wilkinson and other visitors
saw in the Yorkshire ladies. She was indeed "but a homely
woman", yet possessing grace, vivacity, and a love for music
and the diversions of society. She had been well bred, and
"possessed", says the antiquary,* "a first rate understand-
ing", which enabled her to help Laurie with his sermons.
"She had many admirers", it is said further, "as she was
reported to have a fortune". When Sterne began to pay
court to her she was twenty-five or twenty-six years old—
about a year younger than himself. It was altogether a
fitting match, if a man so volatile as Sterne were ever to
marry.

Miss Lumley belonged like himself to a good county family.
Her father, the Eev. Kobert Lumley, was the son of Rob-
ert Lumley, Gentleman, of Northallerton, a market-town in
the North Eiding, by Eleanor, daughter to John Hopton,
Esq., of Armley, a suburb of Leeds. His grandmother, on
the mother's side, was a sister of Thomas Eymer. the critic
and historian. At the age of sixteen Eobert Lumley, his
father then deceased, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as
a pensioner, where he graduated, Bachelor of Arts in 1710-1,
and Master of Arts four years later. Ordained deacon by

* John Croft, whose anecdotes of Sterne, to be frequently quoted,
have been published by W. A. S. Hewins, WMtefoord Papers, 223-35
(Oxford, 1898).

44 LAWRENCE STEBNE

the Archbishop of York on December 21, 1712, he seems to
have obtained a curacy, though I have discovered no record
of it, near Armley; most likely at Adel, a few miles to the
northwest of the estate of his maternal grandfather. The
little church at Adel, with its sculptured porch and chancel
arch, is one of the loveliest survivals of Norman architecture
in all England. Within the wide parish lay Cookridge Hall,
the seat of Thomas Kirk, father and son, each of whom was
known as "an ingenious gentleman, and virtuoso in all sorts
of learning". They were both Fellows of the Royal Society.
Cookridge was then famous in the district and beyond it for
a "fine library and museum of antiquities" and for a park
and wood laid out in "geometrical lines and centres".
Thomas Kirk the younger died at the age of twenty-five,
within a year and some months after his marriage to Lydia,
daughter of Anthony Light, Esq., of London. Two years
later — on September 24, 1711— the young widow took as her
second husband Robert Lumley. Of the marriage were born
two daughters, Elizabeth and Lydia, of whom the former
was christened in the beautiful Norman church at Adel,
October 13, 1714. This is the Elizabeth Lumley who lived
to become the wife of Laurence Sterne. Her sister was a
year or two younger. As if loth to give up the pleasant
retirement, the family stayed on at Cookridge for nearly ten
years.

But on January 12, 1720-1, Robert Lumley was admitted
to the priesthood, at an unusually advanced period in life,
by the Archbishop of York, preparatory to his appointment
oh October 16 to the vicarage of Bedale, near Northallerton
and the home of his childhood- He was instituted to the
rectory on the sixth of the following November. In this old
market-town, consisting of one long and wide street with the
church of St. Gregory at the upper end of it, he remained
until near his death in January or February, 1731-2.
Bedale was one of the richest livings in Yorkshire— worth
nearly £2000 a year— and so the Lumleys "lived in style"
giving Lydia and Elizabeth "a superior education", as might
be expected of a mother who had enjoyed the comforts and
luxuries of Cookridge Hall. It is impossible to follow the

MAREIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 45

migration of the family immediately after the death of the
father. But Mrs. Lumley did not long survive her husband.
On May 17, 1736, letters of administration of the father's
estate were granted by the Prerogative Court of York to
Elizabeth and Lydia Lumley, who are described in the pre-
liminary application as spinsters living at Kendal, in West-
moreland. No inventory of the estate was returned. Soon
after the loss of her mother, Lydia married the Reverend
John Botham, a Trinity man and son of the vicar of the
same name at Clifton-Campville in Staffordshire, where it
may be the Lumleys also owned an estate. Mr. Botham was
subsequently appointed to the rectory of Albury in Surrey.
Lydia died on March 22, 1753, at the age of thirty-nine, and
was buried in the ancient parish church within Albury Park.
After the marriage of her sister, Elizabeth divided her time
between Clifton-Campville and the pleasures of York, settling
at length, as said above, for a part of the year under the
shadow of the great minster.*

It took Sterne two years to win Miss Lumley. During
the first months of the courtship, they shared together the
amusements of York and sat down to many a "sentimental
repast" in the seclusion of Little Alice Lane amid roses and
jessamines. From some odd fancy they called their retreat
D'Estella, perhaps in memory of Stella, the name by which
Swift addressed Esther Johnson. The lovers had a con-
fidante— just as one reads of in the novels of Samuel Rich-
ardson—disguised under the name of "the good Miss S — -"
who tried to help along the attachment to a successful issue.
Miss Lumley, though she owned she liked Sterne from the
first, held him off with the excuse that she was not rich

* Information concerning the Lumleys and the families into which
they married lies scattered in The Registers of the Parish Church of
Adel (volume V of Thoresby Society Publications, 1895) ; T. D.
Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete (1816) ; Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensis,
edited by Whitaker (1816) ; Register of Marriages in York Minster
(Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal, II, 321) ; and
Manning and Bray, History * * * of Surrey, II, (1809). An etching
of the church at Adel is given by H. T. Simpson, Archaeologia Adelensis
(London, 1879). Likewise of Bedale, by H. B. M'Call, The Early
History of Bedale (London, 1907). The present writer has been fur-
nished with the entries with reference to Eobert Lumley in the Admis-
sion Book of Trinity College and the diocesan registries of York and
Chester.

46 LAUEENCE STEENE

enough or that he was too poor to think of marriage just
then. At this stage in the courtship, Miss Lumley went to
her sister's in Staffordshire for a long visit extending into
the winter, I should say, of 1740-41. Letters of course now
passed to and fro. "I wrote to her often", says Sterne.
Four of his letters Miss Lumley kept by her through life,
doubtless as the ones that pleased her especially well. No
one ever wrote love-letters at all like them, except in imita-
tion of them. They are studies in emotion, possessing the
harmony and cadence of phrase and sentence that were to
distinguish, a quarter-century later, the Sentimental Journey
from all other English books.

In the first letter, Sterne, tired of the haunts of men,
imagines for himself and Miss Lumley an earthly paradise
where the polyanthus blooms in midwinter:

"Yes! I will steal from the world, and not a babbling
tongue shall tell where I am— Echo shall not so much as
whisper my hiding-place— suffer thy imagination to paint
it as a little sun-gilt cottage, on the side of a romantic hill-
dost thou think I will leave love and friendship behind me?
No! they shall be my companions m solitude, for they will
sit down and rise up with me in the amiable form of my
L — . — . "We will be as merry and as innocent as our first
parents in Paradise, before the arch fiend entered that unde-
scribable scene.

"The kindest affections will have room to shoot and
expand in our retirement, and produce such fruit as madness,
and envy, and ambition have always killed in the bud.— Let
the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the
desolation is beyond the horizon of peace.— My L. has seen a
polyanthus blow in December— some friendly wall has shel-
tered it from the biting wind.— No planetary influence shall
reach us, but that which presides and cherishes the sweetest
flowers. God preserve us ! How delightful this prospect in
idea! We will build, and we will plant, in our own way-
simplicity shall not be tortured by art— we will learn of
nature how to live — she shall be our alchymist, to mingle all
the good of life into one salubrious draught.— The gloomy
family of care and distrust shall be banished from our

MARBIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 47

dwelling, guarded by thy hand and tutelar deity— we will
sing our choral songs of gratitude, and rejoice to the end of
our pilgrimage.

"Adieu, my L. Eeturn to one who languishes for thy
society."

The second letter strikes a more personal note in the
account of Sterne's dreadful state after Miss Lumley's depar-
ture to her sister. Sterne fell into a fever, and the con-
fidante, hearing of it, tried to console with him, with the
result that they both broke down under the pressure of their
emotions. Sterne took Miss Lumley's lodgings in Little
Alice Lane during her absence, but he could neither eat nor
sleep until Fanny, the house-maid, had braced his nerves
with hartshorn:

"You bid me tell you, by dear L., how I bore your depar-
ture for S , and whether the valley where D'Estella

stands, retains still its looks — or, if I think the roses or jessa-
mines smell as sweet, as when you left it— Alas ! everything
has now lost its relish and look ! The hour you left D 'Estella,
I took to my bed.— I was worn out by fevers of all kinds, but
most by that fever of the heart with which thou knowest well
I have been wasting these two years— and shall continue

wasting till you quit S . The good Miss S , from the

forebodings of the best of hearts, thinking I was ill, insisted
upon my going to her. — What can be the cause, my dear L.,
that I never have been able to see the face of this mutual
friend, but I feel myself rent to pieces? She made me stay
an hour with her, and in that short space I burst into tears a
dozen different times— and in such affectionate gusts of
passion, that she was constrained to leave the room, and
sympathize in her dressing-room — I have been weeping for
you both, said she, in a tone of the sweetest pity— for poor
L.'s heart, I have long known it— her anguish is as sharp
as yours— her heart as tender— her constancy as great— her
virtue as heroic— Heaven brought you not together to be
tormented. I could only answer her with a kind look, and a
heavy sigh— and returned home to your lodgings (which I
have hired till your return), to resign myself to misery—
Fanny had prepared me a supper— she is all attention to me

48 LAURENCE STEBNE

—but I sat over it with tears; a bitter sauce, my L., but I
could eat it with no other— for the moment she began to
spread my little table, my heart fainted within me.— One
solitary plate, one knife, one fork, one glass!— I gave a
thousand pensive, penetrating lobks at the chair thou hadst
so often graced, in those quiet and sentimental repasts — then
laid down my knife and fork, and took out my handkerchief,
and clapped it across my face, and wept like a child.— I do so
this very moment, my L. ; for, as I take up my pen, my poor
pulse quickens, my pale face glows, and tears are trickling

down upon the paper, as I trace the word L . 0 thou!

blessed in thyself, and in thy virtues— blessed to all that
know thee— to me most so, because more do I know of thee
than all thy sex.— This is the philtre, my L., by which thou
hast charmed me, and by which thou wilt hold me thine, whilst
virtue and faith hold this world together.— This, my friend,
is the plain and simple magic, by which I told Miss — ■ — I
have won a place in that heart of thine, on which I depend so
satisfied, that time, or distance, or change of everything which
might alarm the hearts of little men, create no uneasy sus-
pense in mine^-Wast thou to stay in S these seven years,

thy friend, though he would grieve, scorns to doubt, or to be
doubted— 'tis the only exception where security is not the
parent of danger.— I told you poor Fanny was all attention
to me since your departure— contrives every day bringing in
the name of L. She told me last night (upon giving me some
hartshorn), she had observed my illness began the very day of

your departure for S ; that I had never held up my head,

had seldom, or scarce ever, smiled, had fled from all society—
that she verily believed I was broken-hearted, for she had
never entered the room, or passed by the door, but she heard
me sigh heavily — that I neither eat, or slept, or took pleasure
in anything as before— judge then, my L., can the valley
look so well— or the roses and jessamines smell so sweet as
heretofore? Ah me!— But adieu!— the vesper bell calls me
from thee to my God!"

During the correspondence, Miss Lumley entered com-
plaint against her lover and their common friends at York

MARRIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 49

that they were neglecting her. Letters, no doubt, as was
Sterne's way, were not so frequent as they had been. In two
letters Sterne pleaded for mercy at "the amiable tribunal"
of pity, promising never to offend after. For her benefit he
moralised prettily on the art of the coquette, the family
affections, and the death of his dear friends. As an index
to his reading at the time, we may observe, in addition to
Eve's bower in Milton's Paradise Lost, an apparent allusion
to The Beggar's Opera and a quotation from the Essay on
Man, though not written out, as if Miss Lumley were
thoroughly familiar with the moral essay of the great poet.
Winter was breaking, he finally told Miss Lumley, and she
must come to York for the Spring. "Return— return— "
was the burden, "the birds of Yorkshire will tune their pipes,
and sing as melodiously as those of Staffordshire".

The summons was heeded. What occurred afterwards
Sterne himself related for his daughter Lydia. At her
return, says the memoir, Miss Lumley "fell into a consump-
tion—and one evening that I was sitting by her with an
almost broken heart to see her so ill, she said, 'My dear
Laurey, I can never be yours for I verily believe I have not
long to live — but I have left you every shilling of my for-
tune;'—upon that she shewed me her will— this generosity
overpowered me. It pleased God that she recovered, and I
married her in the year 1741". By that time Sterne had
become, I dare say, fatigued by his courtship. He took Miss
Lumley on the impulse of the moment, just as his father before
him had taken the widow of a brother officer. The pathetic
scene we have described, occurred, it is said, in the Assembly
Booms; "whence they went off directly * * * and were
married". However that may be, the story closes with the
terse record in the registry of York Minster that the Eev.
Laurence Sterne and Miss Elizabeth Lumley of Little Alice
Lane were married, under special license, on Easter Monday,
March 30, 1741, by Richard Osbaldeston, Dean of the
York Chapter. The romance which was thus quickly shuffled
to a conclusion, like the last act of a play, had developed
in Sterne a peculiar emotional state, to describe which he was

4

50 LATJEENCE STERNE

the first of all writers to employ the epithet sentimental.*
Had he then possessed the motive and matter for it, he might
have written his Sentimental Journey.

II

Straightway after marriage, Sterne prepared to occupy
his living at Sutton-on-the-Forest ; by midsummer he was
settled there with his bride. The "little sun-gilt cottage on
a romantic hill" that he had dreamed of in his correspond-
ence with Miss Lumley proved to be "a large ruinous house",
which could be rendered habitable only after "great re-
pairs". Under his predecessor, the late Reverend John
"Walker, it had been totally neglected and was ready to fall.
Sterne 's income at this time was hardly eighty pounds a year,
Sutton being estimated at forty pounds and Givendale at
some odd pounds short. Out of that sum Sterne was paying
a curate. His wife, true to her promise, placed in her
husband's hands— his honour laid as surety — her fortune,
which was referred to many years later as forty pounds a
year. This additional income enabled Sterne to renovate his
parsonage; but like others who have made over old houses,
he found the expense of it greater than had been anticipated.
When he had done with the repairs, he recorded his emotions,
along with the items of cost, in the following entry on the
inside of one of the covers to his parish registry :

£ s a
"Laid out in Sashing the Souse, IS 0 0 A.Dom.17'41
"In Stukoing And Bricking the Hall 4 16 0"|

"In Building the Chair House 5 0 0 \ L.Sterne

"In Building the Parlr Chimney $ 0 V\ Vicar

"Little House g 3 0 1

"Spent m Shapeing the Booms, Plastering, Underdrawing $ Jobbery

' ' God knows what ■ - . , > >

It is curious that Sterne should first appear as a jester in
this old dog-eared parish book. The dash he drew across

*See, however, Boissy's Le Francois a Londres, a one act prose
comedy first performed in 1727. The heroine says of love that it is
in England un commerce de sentimens (Scene II). From this it is not
a far step to Sterne's "sentimental commerce" or "sentimental

MARRIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 51

the page on bringing the account to a close, leaving it to
Omniscience to write in the long row of figures, is whimsical
enough for Tristram Shandy. Mrs. Sterne's breeding also
comes out here unexpectedly. She was to have her dwelling
newly sashed after the latest style. The chair-house, too,
was for her benefit, that she might keep a carriage for driving
about the district or taking a wheel into York to visit her
friends. After repairing and rebuilding, came "the entire
furnishing" of the rectory at an expense of which Sterne
complained, though he gave no details. Their house in order,
the vicar and his wife began to lay out "pleasing walks",
as they called them, "amid trees, shrubs, and flowers".
They were also as curious as Mr. Walter Shandy "in wall-
fruit and green gages especially". Their curate, the Rev-
erend Mr. Wilkinson, as it is faithfully recorded in the
parish registry, began the improvements by building an
arbour, and planting twenty or more elm trees in the large
house garden and the churchyard, a few of which may be
still standing. Then followed further planting along with
the necessary enclosures, the details of which Sterne set down
in his own hand. The entries run :

"Mem? That the Cherry Trees & Espalier Apple Hedge
we planted in y? Garden October y? 9, 1742. The Nec-
tarines and Peaches planted the same Day. The Pails
set up two months before

"I Laid out in the Garden in y? year 1742, the sum of
£8 15s. 6d.

L. Sterne

"Laid out in Inclosing the Orchard, & in Apple Trees,

£ sh d

&c in ye. Year 1743, 5 0 0

"The Apple Trees, Pear & Plumb Trees, planted in y?
Orchard ye 28th day of October, 1743, by L. Sterne."

During this period of planting and repairing, Sutton was
visited by two hail-storms, the severity of which Sterne no

52 LAURENCE STERNE

doubt playfully exaggerated, for we read in the parish book
near the end:

"In the Year 1741

"Hail fell in the midst of Summer as big as a
Pidgeon's Egg, w°? unusual Occurrence I thought fit to
attest under my hand

L. Sterne

"In May 1745

"A dismal Storm of Hail fell upon this Town & upon
some other adjacent ones, wc.h did considerable Damage
both to the Windows & Corn. Many of the Stones meas-
ured six Inches in Circumference.

"It broke almost all the South & West Windows, both of
this House and my Vicarage at Stillington.

L. Sterne"

When Sterne finished his improvements he had made out
of Sutton a comfortable retirement, which was to be his
home for nearly twenty years. The old rectory, subsequently
burned to the ground, lay back from the road to the north,
in an orchard of shrubs, fruit, and flowers of his own plant-
ing. If his .wife's fortune had been reduced by the
expense of coming into the living, two important preferments
more than made up for the loss. On December 26, 1741, the
prebend of North Newbald fell vacant by the death of the
Reverend Robert Hitch, who had "overheated himself"* in
the recent election for members of Parliament. At a meeting
of the York Chapter held on the fifth of the following Jan-
uary, Sterne resigned Givendale for the wealthier stall of
North Newbald. The formal installation took place on
January 8. Besides being worth fully £40 a year, the new
prebend carried with it a house in Stonegate near the minster,
which could be rented or used as a town residence.

Adjoining Sutton, two miles to the north, was the vicar-
age of Stillington, which fell to Sterne on the death of the

* Thomas Gent, the York printer, Life, 194-95 (London, 1832).
Sterne is briefly described.

Manage and settlement S3

incumbent, Eichard Musgrave, formerly curate of Marton.
The little church, set high over the hamlet, looks much as it
did in Sterne's time. The old box pews remain and the old
gallery in the rear is still used. Of the new appointment
Sterne said, "By my wife's means I got the living of Stilling-
ton — a friend of her's in the south had promised her, that if
she married a clergyman in Yorkshire, when the living became
vacant, he would make her a compliment of it. ' ' The friend
in the south who exerted his influence for Sterne has been
doubtfully identified with Thomas, Lord Fairfax, who soon
afterwards settled in Virginia, where he became associated
with the young George Washington. Be this as it may, the
details of the appointment which enrolled Sterne among the
small pluralists of the period, may be discovered in con-
temporary records. It is well to give them here. On Feb-
ruary 27, 1743-4, the Dean and Chapter of York issued
certificates to the Chancellor of England, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and the Archbishop of York, praying that Sterne,
known for his "good life and conversation" be permitted to
hold Stillington along with Sutton. On March 3, the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury signed the dispensation, "being moved
by your supplications" and the general considerations that
"the greater progress Men make in Sacred Learning, the
greater in Encouragement they merit, and the more their
Necessities are in daily Life, the more necessary supports of
Life they require". It was stipulated that Sterne should
preach thirteen sermons at Stillington every year, exercise
hospitality for two months each year, and in his absence
provide a minister for the parish in case the revenues were
adequate for the purpose. The dispensation was confirmed
by letters-patent of his Majesty on March 6. These pre-
liminaries over, the Reverend Richard Levett, Prebendary of
Stillington, who was the patron of the living, presented
Sterne 's name to Richard Osbaldeston, the Dean of York, who
made the appointment on the thirteenth. The next day
Sterne was formally inducted into the vicarage by Richard
Hanxwell, Vicar of Sheriff-Hutton.*

* The Richard Levett who nominated him to the living also held a
prebend at Southwell. He seems to have been the son of the vicar of
the same name at Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, who graduated from

54 LAURENCE STERNE

Stillington added to Sterne's resources another annual
forty pounds. He could now live comfortably and at ease.
So near was Stillington to Sutton that it was not necessary
for him to engage a curate for the new parish. At the same
time Mr. Wilkinson found another field of labour; and for
several years Sterne either performed alone the duties of two
parishes or employed curates who had not reached the dignity
of a bishop's license. He had, however, a trustworthy and
obedient parish-clerk, whom he facetiously called "my sinful
Amen". It was Sterne's custom to preach at Sutton on
Sunday morning and to stroll over to Stillington for an after-
noon service, using very likely the same sermon, for Sterne
was not the man to expend unnecessary energy upon his
parishioners. Once, said the brother of the squire of Stilling-
tori, as Sterne "was going over the Fields on a Sunday to
preach at Stillington, it happened that his Pointer Dog
sprung a Covey of Partridges, when he went directly home
for his Gun and left his Flock that was waiting for him in
the Church in the lurch".

In the dispensation granting him the right to hold Stil-
lington as well as Sutton, Sterne was styled "Chaplain to
the Eight Honourable, Charles, Earl of Aboyn", that is, to
Charles Gordon, fourth Earl of Aboyne, then a young man
only sixteen or seventeen years old. When or under what
circumstances Sterne became connected with this ancient
Scottish family there is, of course, no indication in the docu-
ment itself. But Sterne had ample opportunity of meeting
the Gordons, for they frequently, if not regularly, attended
the York races in August. Mr. Sidney Lee thinks that he
may have made the grand tour soon after his marriage in
company with the young earl or with some near relation of
his. The conjecture receives considerable support from
Tristram Shandy. Before beginning that book, Sterne had
probably travelled abroad. "Why are there so few palaces
and gentlemen's seats," the elder Shandy is made to ask,
"throughout so many delicious provinces in France? Whence

Christ's College, Oxford, in 1697, and subsequently served as curate
to his father. Thus what little evidence we have points to Richard
Levett, not to Lord Fairfax, as the friend to whom Sterne owed his
preferment.

MABEIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 55

is it that the few remaining Chateaus amongst them are so
dismantled, — so unfurnished, and in so ruinous and desolate
a condition?" In another passage of the first book, Sterne
speaks of the muleteer who "drives on his mule, — straight
forward; — for instance, from Borne all the way to Loretto,
without ever once turning his head aside either to the right
hand or to the left". With the Low Countries Sterne showed
perhaps greater familiarity. Uncle Toby, in giving orders
for his fortifications on the bowling green, insisted on having
the town "built exactly in the style of those of which it was
most likely to be the representative:— with grated windows,
and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c. —
as those in Ghent and Bruges, and the rest of the towns in
Brabant and Flanders". It was in Flanders, too, where
Yorick got an asthma in skating against the wind. And
finally Yorick says, in excuse for not looking into Saxo
G-rammatieus for his descent from Hamlet's jester, "I had
just time, in my travels through Denmark with Mr. Noddy's
eldest son, whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied as gov-
ernor, riding along with him at a prodigious rate, thro' most
parts of Europe, and of which original journey performed
by us two, a most delectable narrative will be given in the
progress of this work; I had just time, I say, and that was
all, to prove the truth of an observation, made by a long
sojourner in that country; — namely, 'That nature was
neither very lavish, nor was she very stingy in her gifts
of genius and capacity to its inhabitants. ' ' ' Prom all this it
may be surmised at least that after the races of 1741, Sterne
left his bride at home and took a flying trip to the Continent
with a stripling from the house of Gordon, renamed "Mr.
Noddy's eldest son" in contempt for his intellect.

At most Sterne's absence abroad was not long enough to
interfere materially with his plans for improving Sutton and
making it his home. He was back by January. It is inter-
esting to see cropping up, in his mode of life at this time,
the ideals of the old squirearchy to which he belonged.
Under different circumstances Sterne would have developed
into another Simon or Kichard of Halifax. The year of his
marriage he was commissioned a justice of the peace, and

56

LAUBENCE STEBNE

from enclosing and planting the garths about the rectory he
branched out into miscellaneous farming for the increase of
his winnings. Like most country parsons of his day, he
looked after the collection and disposal of his tithes in kind,
consisting of the corn and small tithes of Sutton and the hay
of Huby, which belonged to his vicarage. He also cultivated
the glebe of his benefice; and, not satisfied with this, he
broke into his wife's fortune by purchasing a neighbouring
farm, described in legal phrase as "a messuage and certain
lands". In this undertaking Mrs. Sterne joined with the
zest of her husband. "They kept", said the local antiquary
who knew Sterne personally, "a Dairy farm at Sutton, had
seven milch cows, but they allways sold their Butter cheaper
than their Neighbours, as they had not the least idea of
ceconomy, [so] that they were allways behind and in arrears
with Fortune." They also raised geese (which were regarded
as Mrs. Sterne's perquisites) for the market and for presents
to their friends, probably giving away as many as they sold.
Of Mrs. Sterne's "gooses", as he sometimes called them,
that were permitted to run wild, Sterne occasionally wrote
in pleasant humour. "My wife", runs a letter to a friend
at York, "sends you and Mrs. Ash a couple of stubble geese-
one for each; she would have sent you a couple, but thinks
'tis better to keep your other Goose in our Bean Stubble till
another week. All we can say in their behalf is, that they
are (if not very fat) at least in good health and in perfect
freedome, for they have never been confined a moment."
Just as Sterne here took his stubble geese as a theme for
freedom, so in Tristram Shandy his experience in planting
cabbages was turned to a defence of his digressive style.
"I defy", it is said there, "the best cabbage planter that
ever existed, whether he plants backwards or forwards, it
makes little difference in the account (except that he will
have more to answer for in the one case than in the other) —
I defy him to go on coolly, critically, and canonically, plant-
ing his cabbages one by one, in straight lines, and stoical
distances * * * without ever and anon straddling out, or
sidling into some bastardly digression." As time went on,
Sterne became occupied far more than he wished with his

MARRIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 57

farming, as may be seen in the following extract from a letter
to his York friend :

"I would have wrote on Saturday, but in Truth, tho' I
had both Time and Inclination, my Servants had neither the
one nor the other, to go a yard out of their Road to deliver
it— They having set out with a Wagon Load of Barly at
12 o'clock, and had scarse day to see it measured to the
Maltsman. I have four Thrashers every Day at work, and
they mortify me with declarations, That there is so much
Barly they cannot get thro' that speces before Xmas Day,
and God knows I have (I hope) near eighty Quarters of Oats
besides. How shall I manage matters to get to you, as we
wish for three months!"

Sterne's dealings in land which made possible farming
on so large a scale, may be uncovered in the office of the
registry of deeds at Northallerton, where are kept the records
for the North Eiding. Conveyances to and from Sterne as
there recorded, were mostly, after the custom of the time,
in the form of lease and release. Unfortunately the original
deeds were not engrossed in full, but only brief abstracts of
them called memorials, which give merely such details as were
necessary to identify the property in the conveyance. In no
case is there, for example, an estimate of acreage; and
whether a conveyance in a given case means an actual sale or a
mortgage can only be conjectured, for there is never a state-
ment to either effect. Besides all this, the record is evidently
incomplete, as should be expected, for the conveyance by
lease and release was originally a device to escape the expense
and publicity of registration. Still, a shrewd guess, helped
out by Tristram Shandy and a letter or two, leaves no doubt
concerning Sterne's actual purchases. The dairy-farm to
which reference has been made, had formerly been in the
tenure and occupation of one Eichard Tindall, and consisted
of a dwelling, other buildings, and various lands and closes.
It was conveyed to Sterne by William Dawson and his wife
Mary, of Farlington, a neighbouring village and parish, by
lease and release, dated respectively the first and second days
of November, 1744, the year after the planting of the rectory
garden with apples, pears, and plums. There is in the

58 LAURENCE STEENE

memorial no indication of its situation beyond the vague
formula that it lay in "the Town Townfields, precincts, and
Territorys of Sutton in the Forrest". But the farm was
situated, as is evident from what will be said much later in
the memoir, to the north of the road leading through the
hamlet, and it may have actually adjoined the glebe of the
parish.

The week following his purchase of the Tindall estate,
Sterne bought three pieces of land from Richard Har-
land, Esq., the chief proprietor in the neighbourhood. They
are described in the indenture bearing date November 10,
1744, as "one Stockiland lying in Murton Common field,
* * * one land called a Hespole and Clockil Ings at the end
of it, and another land called a Sankle Butt", all within the
township, of Sutton. The character of these lands and the
uses to which they were to be put are sufficiently indicated
by the local names attached to them. Murton was one of the
six common fields of Sutton, which covered altogether thirteen
hundred acres. The "stockiland" within it Sterne evidently
desired as additional pasturage for those seven kine we wot
of. "What the word Hespole comes from I am not quite
certain; but the alternative Clockil Ings is of course a cor-
ruption of Clockholm Ings, meaning a low-lying, marshy
meadow, covered with flowered rushes, known locally as clocks
or clockseaves. Sankle Butt, short for Sancome or Sank-
holm Butt, was likewise "a flat, spongy piece of ground",
abutting upon some boundary. It is a safe inference that
Sterne was about to cooperate with his neighbours in reclaim-
ing the waste land of his parish, as well as to compete with
them in huge crops of oats and barley.

The Tindall farm, supplemented by these meadows and
pastures, comprised all the real estate that Sterne purchased
at Sutton, though land was to come to him in another way to
be related hereafter. In carrying through the purchases,
Mrs. Sterne's available fortune was strained to the utmost,
and additional capital was required, it would seem, for stock-
ing the farm, for ditching, and for general improvements.
At any rate, Sterne conveyed on the fifth and sixth of the
following December the Tindall farm and perhaps the sup-

MABBIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 59

plementary fields and meadows to William Shaw, a merchant
of the city of York. This conveyance was clearly by way of
mortgage. The high hopes with which Sterne, having once
purchased the land, set out on his career as farmer, is reflected
in Tristram Shandy — in the account of the elder Shandy's
"paring and burning, and fencing in the Ox-moor", "a fine,
large, whinny, undrained, unimproved common". "It was
plain", as Mr. Shandy worked out the account, "he should
reap a hundred lasts of rape, at twenty pounds a last, the
very first year — besides an excellent crop of wheat the year
following— and the year after that, to speak within bounds,
a hundred— but in all likelihood, a hundred and fifty— if not
two hundred quarters of pease and beans— besides potatoes
without end." How Sterne's hopes were dashed to the
ground and how he cursed himself for his folly must be kept
for a later period.

Leaving his farming out of the account, Sterne drew
himself, as Vicar of Sutton, in the character of Parson Torick.
Not only is this the tradition, but John Hall-Stevenson, who
knew Sterne best of all men, looked upon the portrait as
essentially true, quoting from it himself, as the newspapers
had often done, the year after his friend's death. Torick 's
parish, — "a small circle described upon the circle of the great
world, of four English miles diameter, or thereabouts" — was
Sutton laid by the side of Stillington. The "large grange-
house", where "the good old body of a midwife" found
hearty welcome, was the residence of the Harlands opposite
the rectory. It was the parson's wife who established the
notable woman in her profession, urging Yorick to procure
the necessary license and recommending her to friends and
acquaintances. Twice the midwife was summoned to the
rectory. A daughter, named Lydia from Mrs. Sterne's
mother and sister, was born and baptised on October 1, 1745,
and was buried on the next day. Her place was taken by
another Lydia, who was born and baptised on December 1,
1747. These records of the parish book, which touched
Sterne so nearly, stand out prominently in his own hand,
separated from the usual entries by the clerk and church
wardens. Perhaps we should not take literally the account

6(j JLAtJSENCE S*EfettE"

Sterne gives of the thin and lean Yoriek riding about his
parish and among the neighbouring gentry on a broken
winded pad as thin and lean as himself, drawing up, as he
jogged along, "an argument in his sermon;— or a hole in his
breeches". "He never could enter a village", says Sterne,
"but he caught the attention of both old and young.— Labour
stood still as he pass'd— the bucket hung suspended in the
middle of the well— the spinning-wheel forgot its round,—
even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping
till he had got out of sight; and as his movement was not of
the quickest, he had generally time enough upon his hands to
make his observations, — to hear the groans of the serious,—
and the laughter of the light-hearted ;— all of which he bore
with excellent tranquility."

This sketch, which furnished the subject for one of
Stothard's graceful designs, is rather too elaborate and too
much in the style of Cervantes for exact truth, to say nothing
of its being an apparent imitation of a passage in Shake-
speare's King John. Still, tradition points in the Vicar of
Sutton to a man who, especially when older, cared little for
decorum. "So slovenly was his dress and strange his gait",
antiquary handed down to antiquary, "that the little boys
used to flock around him and walk by his side."

Sterne and Yoriek were certainly one in temperament.
Both were compounded of whims and humours; both were
light-hearted and outspoken. When Sterne described Yoriek
at the age of twenty-six, he described himself also at the
time when he entered upon the living at Sutton. Of Yoriek,
it is said:

"His character was,— he loved a jest in his heart. * * *
he was as mercurial and sublimated a composition,— as
heteroclite a creature in all his declensions;— with as much
life and whim, and gaite de cceur about him, as the kindliest
climate could have engendered and put together. With all
this sail, poor Yoriek carried not one ounce of ballast- he
was utterly unpractised in the world; and, at the age of
twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course
in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen: So that
upon his first setting out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you

MARBIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 61

will imagine, ran him foul ten times in a day of somebody's
tackling ; and as the grave and more slow-paced were of tenest
in his way,— you may likewise imagine, 'twas with such he
had generally the ill luck to get the most entangled. For
aught I know there might be some mixture of unlucky wit
at the bottom of such Fracas:— For, to speak the truth, Yorick
had an invincible dislike and opposition in his nature to
gravity;— not to gravity as such;— for where gravity was
wanted, he would be the most grave or serious of mortal
men for days and weeks together;— but he was an enemy to
the affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as
it appeared a cloak for ignorance, or for folly; and then,
whenever it fell in his way, however sheltered and protected,
he seldom gave it much quarter.

"Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say,
That gravity was an errant scoundrel; and he would add, —
of the most dangerous kind too,— because a sly one ; and that
he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were
bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-
month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven.
In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he
would say, There was no danger, — but to itself ; — whereas the
very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit;
— 'twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more
sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, with
all its pretensions,— it was no better, but often worse, than
what a French wit had long ago denned it, — vis. A mysterious
carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind;— which
definition of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence, would
say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.

"But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and
unpractised in the world, and was altogether as indiscreet
and foolish on every other subject of discourse where policy
is wont to impress restraint. Yorick had no impression but
one, and that was what arose from the nature of the deed
spoken of; which impression he would usually translate into
plain English without any periphrasis, — and too oft without
much distinction of either person, time, or place;— so that
when mention was made of a pitiful or an ungenerous pro-

62 LATJBENCE STEENB

ceeding,— lie never gave himself a moment's time to reflect
who was the hero of the piece,— what his station,— or how
far he had power to hurt him hereafter ;— but if it was a
dirty action,— without more ado,— The man was a dirty-
fellow, — and so on: — And as his comments had usually the
ill fate to be terminated either in a Ion mot, or to be enliven 'd
throughout with some drollery or humour of expression, it
gave wings to Yorick's indiscretion. In a word, tho' he
never sought, yet, at the same time, as he seldom shunn'd
occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without much
ceremony;— he had but too many temptations in life, of
scattering his wit and his humour,— his gibes and his jests
about him.— They were not lost for want of gathering."

Yorick's good counsellor Eugenius — that is, John Hall-
Stevenson— was wont to warn him against his indiscretions,
saying:

"Trust me, dear Yorick, this unwary pleasantry of thine
will sooner or later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties,
which no after-wit can extricate thee out of. — In these sallies,
too oft, I see, it happens, that a person laugh 'd at, considers
himself in the light of a person injured, with all the rights
of such a situation belonging to him ; and when thou viewest
him in that light too, and reckons up his friends, his family,
his kindred and allies,— and musters up with them the many
recruits which will list under him from a sense of common
danger; — 'tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for
every ten jokes,— thou hast got an hundred enemies ; and till
thou has gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine
ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be
convinced it is so. ' '

The only answer that Yorick would make to his friend's
serious advice was "a pshaw!— and if the subject was started
in the fields,— with a hop, skip, and a jump at the end of it ;
but if close pent up in the social chimney-corner, where the
culprit was barricado'd in, with a table and a couple of arm-
chairs, and could not so readily fly off in a tangent,—
Eugenius would then go on with his lecture upon discretion."
Yorick thought no ill could come of "mere jocundity of
humour", of honest sallies in which there was no "spur

MARBIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 63

from spleen or malevolence". But in this he was mistaken.
As with Torick so it was with Sterne in a less degree.
Prudence, caution, discretion, the virtues that smooth one's
way through life, were ever classed by him among the evil
propensities of human nature; inasmuch as they check the
spontaneous act and make one appear other than he really is.
"I generally act", said Sterne, "upon first impulses", or
"according as the fly stings". A sense of humour, held in
restraint, is often a man's salvation in the affairs of practical
life. But Sterne, a mere bundle of sensations, was over-
mastered by his humour. Delightful as he always was among
friends who understood him, his jests and gibes were a source
of annoyance to many people who were hard hit by them.

The clash came early with Philip Harland, his neighbour
across the way, of whom Sterne wrote laconically just
before his death: "As to the Squire of the parish, I cannot
say we were upon a very friendly footing." The Harlands
had emerged from the yeomanry in the seventeenth century.
Of Richard Harland, Esq., who died in 1689, at the age of
ninety-seven, a mural tablet in the parish church says: "He
was a truly brave and honest man. He first engaged himself
in that Troop of Noblemen and Gentlemen, associated to
guard their Sovereign's Person at York, and had the Honour
to serve as Lieutenant to that Body. The Civil Wars in-
creasing, he adhered to the Royal Cause, in many Battles and
Skirmishes, particularly with that fatal one of Marston Moor,
he greatly distinguished himself; during the Usurpation, he
with many other of the Unfortunate, suffered Pines and
Imprisonment, untill the year 1660, when Monarchy, Religion,
and Liberty were restored together." His grandson Richard,
who had inherited the estate at Sutton and added largely to
it, was among the most respected justices of the peace in the
North Riding. It was of him that Sterne purchased several
parcels of land already described. By the time Sterne came
to Sutton, Richard Harland had settled at York as a coun-
sellor-at law, leaving the active management of his estate to
his eldest son Philip, to whom it subsequently passed by will.*

* The will was signed July 31, 1747, and proved in the Prerogative
Court at York, July 3, 1751. The York Courant (May 15) contained
a glowing obituary notice.

64 LAtTSENcE STEftNE

Besides being in possession of the Grange, and another farm
called Greenthwaite, and frontsteads and enclosures at Sut-
ton, Philip Harland also held, under the Archbishop of York,
a lease of the rectory and the greater tithes of the parish.
Enough may be gleaned of him to warrant the statement that
there was little or nothing in common between the squire and
his vicar. First of all, they differed politically. Harland
was a Tory who contributed liberally to the county hospital
at York,* founded by Dr. John Burton, a violent leader of
his party. Sterne was a "Whig who never subscribed a shil-
ling to the foundation, but ridiculed, as we shall see, the Tory
physician and all that he stood for. The one was a man of
practical affairs, dull and grave, while the other was a jester.
The rubs and vexations that necessarily accompanied them in
the business of the parish, are darkly hinted at in Tristram
Shandy along with raillery of the squire's showy activities.
"A hundred-and-fifty odd projects",— says Sterne of Mr.
Walter Shandy, while doubtless thinking of Philip Harland—
"A hundred-and-fifty odd projects took possession of his
brains by turns— he would do this, and that, and t'other—
He would go to Borne— he would go to law— he would buy
stock— he would buy John Hobson's farm— he would new
forefront his house, and add a new wing to make it even-
There was a fine water-mill on this side, and he would build
a windmill on the other side of the river iu full view to
answer it— But above all things in the world, he would
inclose the great Ox-moor." In heedless talk like this Sterne
was also ridiculing himself, but the stolid country squire
would not understand that. Among other infirmities, the
squire was accustomed to boast of his ancestry. It was he
who erected in the parish church the monument to his great-
grandfather, Richard Harland. Sterne, we may be sure
heard the high sounding phrases of the inscription many
times before they were engraved in marble, and had them in
memory when he set up an altercation between Walter
Shandy and my Uncle Toby over the jack-boots that Sir
Eoger, their great-grandfather, wore at Marston Moor.

Sterne's other parishioners, who lived in "the odd houses
*York Cowrcmt, September 5, 1749.

MARRIAGE AND SETTLEMENT 65

and farms" about him, naturally took sides with the parson
or the squire. Perhaps they had some real grievance against
Sterne inasmuch as the products of his dairy were sold below
the market price, then an offence for which one was liable to
fine and jail. There was a large car, or pond, over on
Stillington Common, where, it is said, Sterne used to go for
his skating, when the fly stung him that way. On one occa-
sion "the Ice broke in with him in the middle of the Pond,
and none of the Parishioners wou'd assist to extricate him,
as they were at variance". Similar to this is the story which
tells how Sterne narrowly escaped an attack from his
parishioners: "Another time a Flock of Geese assembled in
the Church Yard at Sutton, when his "Wife bawl'd out
'Laurie, powl 'em,' i.e. pluck the quills, on which they were
ready to riot and mob Laurie."

It would be a mistake to infer from these stories and
whatever else has been said, that Sterne lived in perpetual
quarrel with the squire of Sutton and his other parishioners.
He lacked tact and "good management" in dealing with
them; and they — steady-going farmers, moving along in the
paths of ancient habit and custom— could not understand
the variable temper of their parson. The result was friction
which sometimes grated aloud. At times their common
affairs surely went on smoothly. Many of the trees that
adorned Sterne's orchard came, says the parish registry, from
the park of Philip Harland. The vicar and the squire on one
occasion laid aside all differences and joined hands in enclos-
ing the common fields and meadows of the parish. The
anecdotist speaks of pleasant gatherings at the rectory and at
neighbouring houses, where Sterne performed on the bass-viol
for his friends; and his wife, who "had a fine voice and a
good taste in music", sometimes contributed to the enter-
tainment by accompanying her husband on his favourite
instrument.

The vicar and his wife loved best to visit with the Crofts
at Stillington Hall, whose friendship more than made up for
the antipathies that existed between them and the Harlands.
The Crofts, said Sterne in recollection of those days, "shewed
us every kindness— 'twas most truly agreeable to be within

5

66 laukence stebne

a mile and a half of an amiable family, who were ever cordial
friends". The Crofts were an old Yorkshire family of
merchants and aldermen that had been associated with
Sterne's own kin for more than a century. One of Sterne's
ancestors, Roger Jaques, Lord Mayor of York, was knighted,
it will be remembered, by Charles the First in 1639. - Two
years later the king was again at York, where he was enter-
tained by the new Lord Mayor, Christopher Croft, whom he
also knighted before leaving the city. From this Sir Christo-
pher, the founder of the family, was descended Sterne's
friend, Stephen Croft. Born on December 8, 1712, less than
a year before Sterne, Stephen Croft, as a young man, went
out to Oporto, where he was engaged with others of his family
in the wine-trade. On the death of his father in 1733, he
inherited the lordship of Stillington and a large estate-
various lands and messuages—- in the parish. He still kept
up, after Sterne settled at Sutton, his connection with the
factory at Oporto, but he then resided for the most part on
his manor. His "amiable" wife, named Henrietta, was a
daughter of Henry Thompson of Kirby Hall, Little Ouse-
burn, a few miles across the country on the way to Knares-
borough.

There was also a younger brother, John Croft, who
"grew up" at Stillington, and afterwards went to Portugal
to make his fortune. He remembered Sterne well; and after
coming back to York and turning antiquary, he wrote of him
the anecdotes from which we have quoted liberally. Sterne
was, he said, "a constant Guest at my brother's Table". The
two men, Stephen Croft and Laurence Sterne, of the same
age and of similar family connections, grew to be most con-
genial companions. The one brought to their common friend-
ship jests innumerable; the other, the tales and adventures
that come to a man of the world. Beyond this, Sterne took
the Crofts into his confidence, telling them what books he
read and studied most in forming his style ; and there by the
fireside of Stillington Hall, he read the first chapters of
Tristram Shandy while it was in manuscript. But for
Stephen Croft the sheets would have gone into the fire instead
of to the printer.

CHAPTER III

POLITICS AND HONOURS

1741-1750

The country parson was also a prebendary of York, who
took an active part in the politics and intrigues within and
without the Cathedral Close, at a time when the entire nation
was stirred by civil and religious commotions. And yet,
notwithstanding his activity, this is the obscurest phase of
Sterne's life after he reached man's estate. We know that
he found time, in the midst of farming and parish business,
to enter the thick of Yorkshire politics, but for following him
in his courses there are very few clues, direct and trust-
worthy. General inference from his character and the posi-
tion he occupied in the Church of York must be at times our
main guide. If our narrative, in consequence of this, now
diverges in places from Sterne himself, it will at least bring
into view the men with whom he touched elbow as friend and
enemy; it will explain, too, some of his opinions and preju-
dices, and furnish the background to the inevitable breach
with his uncle and mother.

On first coming to York, Sterne allied himself with the
men whose voices were most potent in the diocese and chapter.
The see was then occupied by Lancelot Blackburne, an old
man above eighty years of age, "the jolly old Archbishop of
York"— Horace Walpole called him— "who had all the man-
ners of a man of quality". Like Sterne, the aged prelate
was a wit and humourist whose career in the Church had been
accompanied by ballads and anecdotes charging him with gay
immoralities. It was he who collated Sterne to the vicarage
of Sutton. The Dean of the Chapter was Richard Osbaldeston,
then about fifty years old, a Cambridge man and sometime
chaplain to George the Second. It was he who issued the
mandate for Sterne 's induction to StiUington. To him Sterne

67

68 LATJEENCE STEENE

dedicated his first printed sermon "in testimony of the great
respect which I owe to your character in general; and from
a sense of what is due to it in particular from every member
of the Church of York". But the man behind the throne,
to whom Sterne really owed his first preferments, was of
course his "rich and opulent uncle", Dr. Jaques Sterne,
Precentor to the Cathedral and Archdeacon of Cleveland, to
slip over his several other titles. The old archbishop dying
in 1743, he was succeeded by Thomas Herring, a handsome
and dignified ecclesiastic in the very prime of life. A grad-
uate of Jesus College, the year before Dr. Sterne, he
subsequently gained reputation as an eloquent preacher at
Lincoln's Inn Chapel, especially for sermons on the corrupt
state of contemporary manners and a denunciation of the
Beggar's Opera, a kind of writing unknown to "the venerable
sages of antiquity". It was reserved for the moderns, said
the preacher, to discover in "a gang of highwaymen and
pickpockets a proper subject for laughter and merriment".*
Afterwards Dean of Rochester and Bishop of Bangor, he
proved an able administrator, and was duly elevated, as
aforesaid, to the see of York.

The new archbishop and Dr. Sterne were much alike in
temper and opinion; and both were men of tremendous
energy. From the first they joined hands in support of
Whig policies through thick and thin and against all Roman
Catholics, real or imaginary. The year 1745, when Charles
Edward Stuart returned to claim his own, was a strenuous
period for them. On July -24 the bold Pretender landed
with a few friends in the Hebrides, and on August 19,
unfurled his banner at Glenfinnan. After collecting a small
army of Highlanders, he marched to Perth, where he rested
for reinforcements and to discipline his troops. He then
proceeded to Edinburgh, and met the English at Preston
Pans on September 21, rushing upon them with a yell through
the mists of morning and cutting them utterly to pieces.
He subsequently crossed the English border, forced the

* See appendix to Letters from Dr. Thomas Eerring to William
Dvmeombe (London, 1777), containing two letters to the Whitehall
Evening Post on the Beggar's Opera, dated March 30 and April 20
1728. F '

POLITICS AND HONOURS 69

capitulation of Carlisle, marched south through Penrith,
Kendal, and Lancaster into Derbyshire, where he was checked
and turned backwards into Scotland. The last scene of all
was the terrible carnage of the Duke of Cumberland at Cul-
loden on April 16, 1746, whence the prince fled, a fugitive
among the mountains and islands to the west. At York, as
at other towns in the north, the events of '45 threw the
people into consternation. For a time shops were closed and
all business was suspended. Archbishop Herring sounded
the alarm to the nation in a sermon preached in the cathedral
on September 22, the day after the defeat at Preston Pans.
This sermon was preparatory to a plan that the archbishop
had been maturing for some weeks for uniting the people of
Yorkshire into an association for "the security of his
Majesty's Person and government and for the defence of the
county of York". On September 24, the nobility, clergy, and
gentry met at the ancient castle of York, where the arch-
bishop presented the articles of association in an eloquent
speech,* giving "the reasons of our present assembling".
The commotions in Scotland, it was claimed, were but a part
of a general design concerted for the ruin of England by
France and Spain, "our savage and bloodthirsty enemies".
The clergy of the diocese were especially commanded "to
instruct and animate" their congregations "to stand up
against Popery and Arbitrary Power under a French and
Spanish government". By the archbishop's exertions a
defence fund was collected amounting to £31,364, to which
Jaques Sterne contributed £50. "Laurence Sterne, clerk",
it is recorded, "subscribed and paid £10. 10s." and collected
from his two parishes £15. 14s. 6d.t

Next to the archbishop, the church politician most active
at York in 1745 and immediately thereafter was Dr. Jaques
Sterne. When the Duke of Cumberland returned from the
victory of Culloden, stopping on his way south at York, where

*A Speech made by his Grace, the Lord Archbishop of York, at
Presenting an Association enter'd into at the Castle of York (London,
1745).

t An Exact List of the Voluntary Subscribers, with the sums each
subscrib'd and paid for the Security of his Majesty's Person and
Government (York, 1747).

70 LAUBENCE STEENE

he was granted the freedom of the city, he stayed, at his own
request, with the precentor in the Minster Yard instead of
with Archbishop Herring or the Lord Mayor. This compli-
ment to Dr. Sterne is significant of the value that the gov-
ernment attached to his services. His sermons and addresses
at the time, to say the truth, rather surpassed the archbishop 's
in fire and savage denunciation of the Pretender, Jacobites,
and Koman Catholics. Especially notable is the charge that
Dr. Sterne delivered to his clergy at Thirsk, a few miles from
Sutton, and in other parishes of his archdeaconry, during his
visitations of 1746. It was printed at York the next year
under the title of The Danger arising to our Civil and
Religious Liberty from the Great Increase of Papists, and
the Setting up Public Schools and Seminaries for the Teach-
ing and Educating of Youth in the pernicious Tenets and
Principles of Popery. In this pamphlet, which was dedicated
to the archbishop as the author of "that glorious Association
* * * against the united Force of Popery and Rebellion",
the archdeacon sought to revive the old laws of the time of
Elizabeth and William the Third against saying or hearing
Mass, proselyting, and Roman Catholic schools. After a
brief account of the abominations of Popery, it was carefully
and minutely explained to the clergy how they and the
church wardens might bring all recusants in their parishes to
the bar of justice for fine and imprisonment.

As if in further explanation of how it should be done,
Dr. Sterne himself proceeded against the so-called "Popish
Nunnery" at York. Many of the oldest and wealthiest
families of Yorkshire were still Roman Catholics, and some
of them had given either open or secret support to the House
families were accustomed to keep residence on their estates
of Stuart, both in 1715 and in 1745. Several of these county
in the country during the summer, and to come into York for
the winter, living in large and fine houses with lavish hos-
pitality in Micklegate, the muckle or great street of the city.
In a narrow street branching off from Micklegate Bar, they
established, in 1686, a boarding-school for their daughters,
and placed in charge of it a Mrs. Paston. The little street
outside Micklegate Bar soon got the name of Nunnery Lane

POLITICS AND HONOURS 71

and the old brick house where the school was kept became
known as the Nunnery. Over this institution the Church of
York was at times very uneasy. In 1714, Mrs. Paston, like
other Eoman Catholics in Micklegate ward, refused to take
the oath of allegiance to George the First, and in consequence
her school was closely watched for some time. But every-
thing became quiet in the course of a few years until the
disturbances of 1745 and thereafter. Then Dr. Sterne made
up his mind to put an end to this "Popish Seminary, set up
for poisoning the minds of the King's Subjects". Two old
women then in charge of the school, one of whom was styled
"the Abbess", were summoned before an ecclesiastic court
and convicted of recusancy. They were admonished and
fined twelve pence a Sunday.* Not satisfied with this mild
punishment, Dr. Sterne proceeded against them under the
laws against saying or hearing Mass and against a Papist's
engaging in the education or boarding of youth. The cause
dragged on in the courts until 1751, when it was dropped.
Throughout it all the "pious Doctor" was bantered a good
deal on his "rough methods of making Converts of the
Ladies" and on "his stale Ecclesiastical tricks". What he
imagined, in the blindness of his zeal, as a nunnery, was a
quite harmless boarding-school which flourished long after-
wards without molestation.

Dr. Sterne's aide-de-camp, so to speak, during this period
was his nephew, Laurence Sterne. But of what the young man
did in the humble capacity, there are, as has been said, no con-
temporary records. His deeds redounded to the credit or dis-
credit of his uncle. This part of his life can not be uncovered
in satisfactory detail. And yet a hint or indication, a tradi-
tion, and a chance phrase dropped by Sterne among friends in
later life, are sufficient for a true relation so far as it goes.
Laurence Sterne was no doubt initiated into York politics
during the midsummer of 1741, when occurred the general
election that resulted in the retirement of Sir Robert Walpole.
At York the contest between Whig and Tory was waged with
a bitterness unknown for many years. In the poll-books
published afterwards, each party accused the other of undejr-
* YqtTc Qourant, Oct. 3, 1749,

72 LAUEENCE STEENE

hand and disgraceful methods of securing votes, hinting,
though not openly charging, bribery. Against the Tories,
a large and influential body containing a majority of the
country gentlemen, were marshalled the clergy in compact
and solid ranks, under the leadership of Dr. Sterne and other
ecclesiastics of high place. Notwithstanding the most strenu-
ous effort, the Whigs barely succeeded in electing one of their
candidates to the new Parliament, though he had represented
York for twenty years and had just been appointed one of
the lords of the admiralty. Their second candidate was left
far behind in the polling by the two Tories. What that fierce
contest meant for the minor clergy and the understrappers
may be inferred from a brief record to which reference has
been already made. The Eeverend Robert Hitch, Canon and
Prebendary of North Newbald, "a fine tall personage", said
Thomas Gent, a York printer and bookseller, "overheated
himself about obtaining votes for Parliament, that threw him
into a mortal fever, which * * * conveyed his precious soul,
I hope, into the regions of a blessed immortality".* That
Laurence Sterne, then Prebendary of Givendale, likewise
performed services deemed worthy of reward, seems quite
clear, though there is no mention of them; for within ten
days after the death of Mr. Hitch, he was preferred to the
comfortable prebend so opportunely left vacant.

Though Sterne likely engaged in the open solicitation of
votes as well as his predecessor who lost his life thereby, his
main services to his church and party at this time and in
Bucceeding years were performed by his facile pen. To this
effect we have direct, if vague, statements. "In his younger
years", so runs a letter of John Croft respecting Sterne, "he
was a good deal employed by his Uncle in writing political
Papers and Pamphlets in favour of Sir Robert Walpole's
Administration". "We have heard", said the Monthly Re-
view for October, 1775, "of his writing a periodical election-
eering paper at York in defence of the Whig interest".
St. James's Chronicle, in its issue of April 10, 1788, had a
longer version of the same story, which, the correspondent
claimed, Sterne once told to a friend. "He wrote", it is said

* Thomas Gent, Life, 194-95.

POLITICS AND HONOURS 73

there, "a weekly paper in Support of the Whigs during the
long Canvass for the great Contested election, * * * and he
owed his Preferment to that Paper— so acceptable was it to
the then Archbishop". The essential truth of these tradi-
tions is confirmed by Sterne himself in his brief autobiog-
raphy, wherein he says "my uncle * * * quarrelled with me
* * * because I would not write paragraphs in the news-
papers".

The only regularly printed newspaper at York was The
York Courant, then issued every Tuesday. Though not
violently partisan in ordinary times, it was owned and con-
ducted by a Tory, Cassar Ward, the printer and bookseller
in Coney Street, who practically closed the columns of his
newspaper to the Whigs during excited canvasses and the
Jacobite insurrection, turning it into a Tory organ. Only by
browbeating, was Dr. Sterne then able to get his paragraphs
inserted into the Courant Under these circumstances it was
necessary for him and his party to print and issue pamphlets
and temporary sheets. To this work the nephew of Dr. Sterne
would be expected to contribute his share. Of the pamphlets
that Laurence wrote at this time, none have yet been iden-
tified; and we can not place our finger upon any paragraph
in the newspapers as surely his. But there is a clue to the
temporary sheet in which he probably bore a hand. The
Whig printer at York from 1742 to 1752 was John Gilfillan.
At his press in Coffee Yard were printed the List of the
Voluntary Subscribers * * * for the Defence of the County
of York and the various archidiaconal charges of Dr. Sterne.
On the title-page of the List, bearing date 1747, is an
announcement beneath the name of John Gilfillan, that at his
shop "may be had the News-paper call'd The York Journal,
or the Protestant Courant". Two years before this — on
January 22, 1744-5, according to a minute of the House of
Commons— "John Gilfillan, printer of the York Courant, was
ordered to attend for an article reflecting on Admiral Vernon,
a member of the House".* In designating the journal that
had offended, the clerk either made a mistake or purposely
abbreviated its long title, for Gilfillan never had anything
t Smith's Old YorlcsUre, new series, II, 191 (1890).

74 LAUEENCE STEBNE

to do with the Tory York Courant. No copy of Gilfillan's
newspaper, so far as is known, now exists ; but Robert Davies,
a York antiquary of the last century, met with one of
Gilfillan's advertisements descriptive of his aim. The little
sheet was to contain "the earliest, best, and most authentic
accounts of any in the North of England ; and, being entirely
calculated for the service of the King and country, he hoped
it would meet with encouragement from all who wished well
to the present happy establishment in church and state ".f
With this newspaper, set up probably in 1745, by a "Whig
printer under the patronage of the Church of York, Laurence
Sterne was undoubtedly closely connected; not perhaps as
editor, but as a leading contributor by direction of his uncle.

It may be just surmised, if nothing more, that the easy
paragraph-writer was the author of various letters to London
newspapers, during the Jacobite alarm, descriptive of doings
at York, of arrests, trials, and executions of those unfortunate
gentlemen who joined the Pretender's army. "On Saturday
last", to quote a sentence here and there from the York cor-
respondent to the London Evening Post for November 6-8,
1746, ' ' On Saturday last eleven of the Rebels under Sentence
of Death * * * were brought from the Castle in three
Sledges. * * * They walked up to the Gallows without the
least Concern, where they prayed very devoutly. After
which Capt. Hamilton mounted the ladder first, Frazier next,
and the rest in order. * * * One of them said he died because
his K— g was not upon the T— e. * * * Captain Hamilton
was the first whose heart was cut out. * * * "We hear that
Sir David Murray, Bart, and fifty-two more have received
Notice of Execution for next Saturday."

In this dreadful work of hunting out the Jacobites and
bringing them to the bar of justice, no one was more zealous
than Dr. Sterne. He was so ready, as a magistrate of the
West Riding, to issue a warrant for commitment on vague
and hearsay evidence, that the Secretary of State thought it
necessary on one occasion to reprimand him. Two cases of
his dealings with well-known Tory physicians of York are of
especial interest here. One is that of Dr. Francis Drake the
* Davies, Memoir of the Jorlc Press, 323-24 (London, 1868).

POLITICS AND HdNOTJES 75

distinguished antiquary and historian, who refused the oaths
in 1745. Before and after his arrest and release, he assailed
"Parson St — e" in paragraph after paragraph contributed
to the York Courant, holding up to scathing ridicule the
precentor's career in religion and politics. In reply Dr.
Sterne, who was not permitted to employ the local newspaper,
had recourse to "virulent advertisements", which circulated
among the coffee-houses and passed on from hand to hand.
Whether his nephew collaborated on these satirical pamphlets,
we do not presume to know; all that can be said is that he
was then writing for his uncle. The second case is that of
Dr. John Burton, author and antiquary, who was also sus-
pected of Jaeobitism. In Dr. Sterne's, long persecution of
this able physician, Laurence was closely involved. His
hatred and contempt for the high-flying Tory amounted to
an obsession falling little short of insanity. Pilloried again
and again in Tristram Shandy, Dr. Burton alias Dr. Slop is
never dropped except to be pilloried a few pages on.

Three years younger than Laurence Sterne, Burton grad-
uated, Bachelor of Medicine, from St. John's College, Cam-
bridge, in 1733, and immediately began the practice of
medicine at Heath, a Yorkshire village near "Wakefield. The
next year came on a contested election for the county, in
which "the greatest exertions were made by the friends
and opponents of Walpole". To the young physician, who
espoused the Tory side with vehemence, was entrusted the
entire charge of the electors of "Wakefield, where "he was
very active and vigilant in the discharge of his duties".
"On the fourth day of the poll", it is said further, "he con-
ducted a body of freeholders to York", saw to it that they
voted, and then watched at a booth till the voting was over.
The contest resulted in the return of one member on each
side. Dr. Burton's candidate, Sir Miles Stapleton, headed
the poll; and Mr. Cholmley Turner, whose canvass was con-
ducted, as was said earlier, by Dr. Sterne, came in second.
But for the pernicious activity of the physician of "Wakefield,
the "Whigs would have easily elected both of their candidates.

The election over, Dr. Burton married a small heiress and
went abroad to complete his medical education. He took the

76 LAURENCE STEENE

degree of M.D. at Kheims and attended the clinics of the
great Boerhaave at Leyden. On his return he settled per-
manently at York "as physician and man-mid- wif e ", where
he soon became very popular with the poorer classes, for he
treated them free of charge, and founded, with the aid of
wealthy friends, a hospital for the city and county of York,
which was known among his political enemies as the Tory
Infirmary. Meanwhile Dr. Burton had appeared in print.
His first effort, which shows- the way his studies were tending,
was An Account of a Monstrous Child, a tract contributed to
the Edinburgh Medical Essays for 1736. This was followed
two years later by A Treatise on the Non-naturals, which
excited the mirth of the author of Tristram Shandy, who
enquired of the doctor "why the most natural actions of a
man's life should be called his non-naturals".

Political animosities, which had long been smouldering,
again broke out violently in the election of 1741. Dr. Burton
again became conspicuous and repeated his success of 1734;
whereupon he was subjected, according to his own narrative,
to all sorts of abuse and calumny from the Whigs in general
and from Dr. Sterne in especial. When, for example, Dr.
Burton, who was living at that time in Coney Street, applied
to the Corporation for a more respectable residence in the
centre of the city, his political enemies interfered and tried
to prevent the lease. He however obtained the large house
that he desired, and went on with his profession, giving more
and more attention to obstetrics, which, as a new science,
exposed him to the ridicule of a large body of men and
women who were content to have their children brought into
the world after the aid ways practised by the midwives.

The year 1745 was now at hand and Dr. Sterne had his
revenge. On November 22, news reached York that the
vanguard of the Highlanders was at Kendal. The inhabit-
ants of York were alarmed lest the rebels should enter York-
shire and march on to the city. Dr. Burton, who owned two
farms near Settle, in the West Riding, not far from the
borders of Lancashire, received permission from the Lord
Mayor to post west to look after his estates, which seemed to
be in danger. The rebels, however, took a route to the left

POLITICS AND HONOUES 77

of his property, leaving his tenants unharmed. After this
discovery, the doctor went on to the village of Hornby in the
North Hiding, where he was taken prisoner, while being
shaved at his inn, by a party of Highlanders, who enter-
tained him at the castle and then conveyed him south to
Lancaster. After a few days' detention, he was dismissed
with a pass for his safety. On reaching York, he was met
by his enemies, to whom had come rumours of his movements.
He was immediately— it was November 30— brought before
Thomas Place the recorder, and Dr. Jaques Sterne, a magis-
trate for the West Riding, who issued a warrant for his
commitment to York Castle as "a suspicious person to his
Majesty's government". During the examination, Dr. Sterne,
the unfortunate physician alleged, "made a great Blustering,
and talked much, but it was vox et praeterea nihil; he was
often in such a Hurry with Party Fury, that he could not
utter his words for vox faucibus haesit, and he presently
foamed at the Mouth especially when I laughed at him and
told him, that I set him and all his Party at Defiance, unless
false witnesses were to appear, which I own, I was not
altogether without Apprehensions about".*

Of what took place on that occasion and subsequently,
Dr. Sterne published three brief accounts in the newspaper
that he was then managing at York, presumably in the York
Journal and Protestant Courant. These notices, it has been
asserted, though without positive evidence, were written by
his nephew. The first of them was sent up to The London
Evening Post, where it appeared in the issue of December
5-7. This paragraph, in the form of a letter from York,
dated December 3, has great interest as most likely from the
pen of Laurence Sterne. It runs as follows:

"On Saturday last Dr. Burton was committed to the
Castle, by the Recorder and Dr. Sterne, as Justices for the
West Riding of this county. It appearing from his own
Confession, that he went from Settle to Hornby, knowing
the Rebels were there, and upon a Supposition that the Duke

* For the whole transaction, see Burton, British Liberty Endangered
(London, 1749) ; and Eobert Davies, A Memoir of John Burton, in the
second volume of The Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical
Journal.

78 LAURENCE STERNE

of Perth was there, wrote a Letter to him, which being opened
by Lord Elcho, he was sent for up by two Highlanders to the
Castle, and, as he says, carried along with them as a Prisoner
to Lancaster, where he con vers 'd with Lord George Murray,
and a Person there call'd his Royal Highness Prince Charles.
There was the greatest Satisfaction expressed at his Com-
mitment, from the highest to the lowest Person in the City,
that has been known here upon any Occasion."

A few days later, Burton applied for release on bail.
This was refused by Dr. Sterne and three other magistrates,
and a further charge was preferred against Burton on the
information of one John Nesbitt, a prisoner in the castle.
A new warrant of detainer was issued with an order to the
jailer not to admit the doctor to bail, as the new evidence
amounted to a charge of, high treason. Dr. Burton lost his
place on the hospital board and it seemed as if he would be
tried and hanged. But just before the assizes, the Secretary
of State intervened with an order that the prisoner be con-
veyed up to London for examination before the Privy Council.
He was detained for a full year — till March 25, 1747 — when
he was summoned to the Cockpit and discharged. While in
London, Dr. Burton conversed with several gentlemen who
had fought on the Pretender's side at Culloden, and after-
wards wrote out what he learned from them, in a little book
entitled A Genuine and True Journal of the Most Miraculous
Escape of the Young Chevalier (1749). By this time, too, he
had begun, under the influence of Dr. Drake, his studies in
archaeology, which resulted in the Monasticon Eboracense, or
the Ecclesiastical History of Yorkshire (1758), a monument
to patient labour and research. After his release, Dr. Burton
resumed his practice and professional studies at York, pub-
lishing in 1751 An Essay toward a Complete New System
of Midwifery, and two years later A Letter to William
Smellie, M.D. of Glasgow, violently attacking the Scotch
physician's theory and practice of midwifery. Thereafter he
was known among his enemies as "Hippocrates Obstetricius".

Despite one's sympathy with the York physician in his
long persecution, he was, to say the truth, very indiscreet in
his conduct. Not a Jacobite and Papist surely, his extreme

POLITICS AND HONOURS 79

Toryism exposed him to a suspicion of being both, at a time
when passions ran so high that little distinction could be
made between a Tory and a Jacobite and none at all between
a Jacobite and a Papist. It was then, to quote the doctor
himself, "tantamount to downright Disaffection, to assert that
the young Chevalier has not a Cloven foot, or something
monstrous about him". It must be said, in justice to the
two Sternes, that the physician excited disgust among many
others with whom he came into conflict, for he was obstinate,
noisy, and meddlesome. An elaborate story got into print
about a fracas that occurred at the inauguration dinner
given by Henry Jubb, an apothecary, on being elected sheriff
of York in the autumn of 1754. The dinner was held at the
sheriff's house in Micklegate. There were present the Lord
Mayor, who presided according to custom, several alder-
men, and other leading citizens including the York physician.
Dr. Burton did not rise with the rest when the Lord Mayor
proposed a toast "To the glorious and immortal memory of
King William the Third"; and in consequence hot words
passed across the table. Mr. George Thompson, a Whig wine-
merchant, by that time "warmed with the convivial glass",
just slightly filliped a cork towards the doctor in way of
derision; and a few minutes afterwards tried to compel him
to drink "Everlasting disappointment [or "damnation", Dr.
Burton said] to the Pretender and all his adherents". Bur-
ton said that he had religious scruples against drinking
damnation to anybody. "A most extraordinary scene of
riot and disorder ensued". The guests jumped upon the
table ; the doctor brandished his cane right and left, levelling
to the floor two gentlemen, one of whom "collared him, tore
his shirt and scratched his neck". At length an attorney-at-
law wrested the weapon from Burton and threw it into the
fire. The scuffle ended with the forcible ejection of the
infuriated physician.*

The name of Laurence Sterne does not appear in the list
of distinguished guests who attended this "entertainment",

* See An Account of What Passed between Mr. George Thompson
of York and Dr. John Burton * * ' at Mr. Sheriff Jubb's Entertain-
ment (London, 1756).

80 LAUBENCE STERNE

as it was mildly called, at Mr. Sheriff Jubb's. But wbetber
present or not, he shared in the violent hostility of his party
towards Dr. Burton. We can not say when and where
Sterne and Burton first came into conflict. We can only
point to the contested election of 1741 and the proceedings
against the physician in 1745-46, as the probable occasions, at
a time when the young prebendary was closely associated with
his uncle in electioneering and paragraph-writing. Burton's
books on midwifery he read, and laughed at them. No
sooner was Tristram Shandy out than everybody at York
knew that Dr. Slop and Dr. Burton were one. As if to make
the identification perfectly clear, Sterne paraphrased an
amusing passage in Burton's attack on Dr. William Smellie
of Glasgow; wherein the Scotch physician was accused of
converting the drawing of a petrified child in an old medical
treatise into a full-fledged author, who of course had never
existed.* Dr. Burton, as he appears under the name of
Dr. Slop, was the bungling man-midwife to whom Tristram
Shandy owed his broken nose. In appearance the accoucheur,
as he wished to be called, was a "little squat, uncourtly
figure * * * of about four feet and a half perpendicular
height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly,
which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-
guards". It was his custom to ride "a little diminutive
pony, of a pretty colour— but of strength— alack!— scarce
able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel".
Slung at the doctor's back might be seen a "green bays bag",
in which jingled, as he rode along, his new-invented ' ' instru-
ments of salvation and deliverance". Dr. Slop runs through
Tristram Shandy, an ill-tempered, ill-mannered, and vulgar
Papist, the butt of all the current jests and prejudices
against Eoman Catholics.

Sterne's frightful caricature of an able physician and
learned antiquary is unexplainable without reference to the

* " If any thing can be added to shock human Faith, or prejudice
your Character as an Historian or Translator, it is your having con-
verted Lithopaedii Senonensis Icon, (which you call Lithopedus Seno-
nensis) an inanimate, petrified Substance, into an Author after you
had been six years cooking up your Boole." — Letter to Smellie, p. 1
(London, 1753). Compare Tristram Shandy, footnote to ch 'xiX.
bk. II. '

POLITICS AND HONOURS 81

fierce religious passions awakened by the events of 1745,
when every church, from the Cathedral of St. Peter's to the
remotest parish, rang with denunciations of Rome and all her
ways. Archbishop Herring set the pace for his clergy when
he announced from the pulpit that "no nation * * * can
possibly be happy under Popery", for "it sinks the spirits
of men and damps the vigour of life", and then went on to
ascribe the dreadful state of society to contamination with
"a Popish abjured Pretender". "Things every Day", de-
clared the preacher, waxing eloquent in his rhetoric, "Things
every Day proceed from bad to worse: Magistracy is con-
temned, Dignity and Order sunk to the common Level,
Adultery and vagrant uncleanliness is become an epidemicall
evil."* This cry was taken up by the archdeacons and
carried to the country parsons. Sterne, like the rest, heeded
the call. He was at York Castle, we may count upon it, when
the clergy and gentry entered into the association for the
defence of Yorkshire, and at Thirsk when his uncle laid bare
the abuses and horrors of the Church of Rome. His own
sermons, such as without doubt belong to this period, might
have been written, so far as their tone is concerned, either by
the archbishop or by the archdeacon. The point of difference
is but one of style. Neither of the men in higher place
defined Popery, with reference to penances and indulgences,
quite so neatly as Sterne when he called it "a pecuniary
system, well contrived to operate upon men's passions and
weakness, whilst their pockets are o 'picking". He preached
eloquently against the Mass and its mummeries, auricular
confession, the arts of the Jesuits, and "the cruelties, mur-
ders, rapine, and bloodshed" that have ever accompanied
Rome in her history. The long wars of his time, the high tax
rate in consequence of them, and the pestilence that swept
over the cattle after the insurrection of 1745, leaving "no
herd in the stalls", he regarded as the last judgment of the
Almighty upon a people who had forgotten the ways of
righteousness, and were listening to the seductions of Jesuit
missionaries.

* A Sermon Preached at Kensington on Wednesday, the Seventh of
January (London, 1747).
6

82 LATOBENCE STERNE

It was a red-letter day in the life of the young prebendary
when he rose into the pulpit of St. Peter's before a large
and distinguished congregation, and drew for them the por-
trait of a victim of the Inquisition. "Behold", spoke the
preacher as if out of a romance, "Behold religion with merey
and justice chain 'd down under her feet, — there sitting
ghastly upon a black tribunal, propp'd up with racks and
instruments of torment.— Hark!— What a piteous groan!—
See the melancholy wretch who utter 'd it, just brought
forth to undergo the anguish of a mock trial, and endure the
utmost pains that a studied system of religious cruelty has
been able to invent. Behold this helpless victim delivered
up to the tormentors. His body so wasted with sorrow and
long confinement, you'll see every nerve and muscle as it
suffers. — Observe the last movement of that horrid engine. —
What convulsions it has thrown him into. Consider the
nature of the posture in which he now lies stretch 'd. — What
exquisite torture he endures by it. — 'Tis all nature can bear.
— Good God ! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging on his
trembling lips, willing to take its leave, — but not suffered to
depart. Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell,—
dragg'd out of it again to meet the flames, — and the insults
in his last agonies."*

Sterne's intense hatred of the Church of Rome, which car-
ried him, with the rest of his party, to the verge of madness,
was a phase of his early development that endured until he
came to visit France and Italy and move freely among all
classes in the two countries. Not till then was he aware that
it was possible for Roman Catholics to be content and happy.
In the meantime his feelings against Rome naturally became
less violent as his mind was drawn to other things. Imme-
diately after the Jacobite crisis, various important changes
affecting his own career took place in the Church of York.
In the autumn of 1747, Archbishop Herring was translated to
the see of Canterbury in recognition of "his tried loyalty and
known zeal in the cause of Protestantism". His place was
filled by Matthew Hutton, formerly Bishop of Bangor.
Richard Osbaldeston, Dean since 1728 of the York Chapter,

* The Abuses of Conscience, July 29, 1750.

POLITICS AND HONOUES 83

was likewise elevated to the bishopric of Carlisle. His
successor was John Fountayne, Prebendary of Salisbury
and Canon of Windsor. Dr. Sterne was disappointed of
immediate reward, for he had lost favour at home because
of his persecution of Dr. Burton and the "Popish Nunnery";
and his Majesty's ministers thought he ought to be satisfied
with the various sinecures which he already enjoyed. At
one time he offered £200 for the freedom of the city of York ;
but the Corporation, in spite of the inducement, refused him
the honour. He tried for the deanery of York and for prebends
at Westminster, Windsor, and Canterbury, in all of which he
missed his aim. But in lieu of these places, he was trans-
ferred, in 1750, from the archdeaconry of Cleveland to that
of the richer East Riding, and five years later he was
appointed to the second prebendal stall in Durham Cathedral.
There are extant several amusing letters* of his to the Duke
of Newcastle, in which the pluralist pleads for these and
other preferments, urging in his own behalf long and faithful
services" to church and state. The one asking for Durham
is typical. It runs as follows:
"My Lord

"I hope Your Grace finds that it is not in my nature to
be troublesome in my Solicitations ; and indeed I am the less
so, as I had the Honour of being taken in so kind a manner
under Your immediate Protection. But hearing of the
Bjshop of Gloucester's Death, in my Passage thro' this Town
to Bath, I am willing to hope that I shall not be thought
impertinent in acquainting Your Grace that a Prebend in
the Church of Durham, where there are two Vacant, as it lies
near my other Preferments, will be equally agreeable to me,
as either Westminster, Windsor, or Canterbury ; but I submit
it intirely to Your Grace's Judgment and Pleasure, only
begging Leave to hope that as I have spent now upwards of
Thirty five years in a faithful Service of the Crown, at an
Expence that I believe no Clergyman else has done, that I
shall, thro' Your Grace's Friendship and Goodness, receive
a Mark of the King's Favour at this time, when there are so
many Stalls vacant in different Churches:
* British Museum, Additional MSS, 32719-30.

84

LAURENCE STEKNE

"There will be no one with more Gratitude, as there has
been none with greater zeal thro' life,

"My Lord,

"Tour Grace's

"Most Dutiful and
"Westminster— September "Devoted Servant

the 19th 1752— "Jaques Sterne"

In reply Newcastle asked Dr. Sterne for a list of his
present holdings with their value, as preliminary to further
grants. The list, which was duly written out and sent to
the duke, contains these large items :

"A Prebend of Southwell. The reserv'd Eent of which
is only £17 — 15s. — 0, but there is a Corpse belonging to it at
South-Muskham, of about £200 a year, and an House at
Southwell.

"The Vicarage of Hornsea Cum Riston, in the East
Eiding of Yorkshire, worth £150—

"The Rectory of Rise something above £90.

"He has nothing else but the Arch-Deaconry, where he
lives, worth about £60 — and a Residentiaryship and Precen-
torship of York, which are inseparable in His Case, because
if he parted with the Precentorship, he cou'd not continue
Residentiary— worth betwixt three and four hundred pounds
a year communibus annis."

Dr. Sterne's income, about £900 a year, as it appears
from the memorandum, was really large for the eighteenth
century, though the pluralist, with his lack of humour, could
not see it that way.

His nephew undoubtedly expected promotion like the rest.
If his services were less conspicuous than theirs, he was cer-
tainly regarded at that time as a young clergyman of unusual
ability, for he was invited to preach at York on two extra-
ordinary occasions. At that time the city supported two
charities for maintaining and educating poor children — the
Blue Coat School for boys, and the Grey Coat School for girls.
On Good Friday, April 17, 1747, the young prebendary
delivered in the parish church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, by
the great minster, the annual sermon for the benefit of these

POLITICS AND HONOURS 85

foundations. Besides the usual congregation of commoners,
there were present the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs, in
full official capacity. The preacher most aptly chose for his
theme "the miracle wrought in behalf of the widow of
Zarephath, who had charitably taken Elijah under her roof,
and administered unto him in a time of great scarcity and
distress". Already a master of his art, Sterne rose, by one
picturesque passage after another, to the pathetic climax
where Elijah restores the widow's dead child to life, and,
taking it in his arms, places it once more in the bosom of its
mother. Finally came the direct appeal to the congregation,
that the unfortunate children among them might not be sent
out into a "vicious world" without friends and instruction.
The appeal was heeded, for the collection amounted to more
than sixty-four pounds.* A few weeks later the sermon
appeared in print as a sixpenny pamphlet, bearing the title
The Case of Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath Consider' d,
and dedicated to "The Very Eeverend Eichard Osbaldeston",
who had not yet received his appointment to Carlisle.

Eloquent as Sterne was on charity, he greatly surpassed
that effort in the sermon preached in the cathedral at the
close of the summer assizes, on July 29, 1750. The oppor-
tunity came to him as chaplain for that year to Sir "William
Pennyman, the high sheriff of the county of York. In the
congregation were the judges for the summer session, "the
Hon. Mr. Baron Clive and the Hon. Mr. Baron Smythe", the
high sheriff and the gentlemen of the grand jury, the clergy of
the cathedral, and commoners to the number of a thousand.
For this official function the preacher' selected as text a sen-
tence from St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews: "For we trust
we have a good conscience". Sterne began, as was hence-
forth to be his way on great occasions, by half denying the
assertion of his text. In this instance was set up the claim
against the Apostle that any man, if he thinks about it at all,
ought to know whether he has a good conscience or not; it
should be for him a matter of knowledge, not merely of
trust, St. Paul to the contrary notwithstanding. After
winning attention by this startling device, Sterne proceeded
* General Advertiser, April 25, 1747.

86 LAURENCE STERNE

to draw from life admirable character-sketches of various
types of men, ranging from the openly vicious to the casuist
who permits conscience to he dethroned from the judgment-
seat by passion, greed, self interest, or false notions of honour.
On the way he stopped for a gay thrust at his banker and
physician, "neither of them men of much religion", to whom
he trusted his fortune or life, simply because it was for their
advantage to deal honestly with him: because, he said, "they
cannot hurt me without hurting themselves more". But in
case it should be to the interest of the one, added the
preacher, "to secrete my fortune and turn me out naked in
the world", or of the other to "send me out of it and enjoy
an estate by my death without dishonour to himself or his
art", then no dependence could be placed upon these men
who make a jest of religion and treat its sanctions with con-
tempt. Running all through the sermon, as an adroit com-
pliment to the judges, were images and phrases taken from
the procedure of law-courts, reaching their climax at the
close, where Sterne likened conscience to "a British judge in
this land of liberty, who makes no new law, but faithfully
declares that glorious law which he finds already written".
At "the unanimous request" of "many Gentlemen of
Worth and Character", the sermon was sent to the local press
as a sixpenny pamphlet under the title of The Abuses of Con-
science. On the title-page were the names of the two hon-
ourable judges; and the dedication was inscribed to "Sir
"William Pennyman, Bart." and a long list of grand jurors.
So well did Sterne himself like this clever sermon— the most
closely reasoned discourse that ever came from his pen-
that he afterwards slipped it into Tristram Shandy, where
Dr. Slop, alias Dr. Burton, who surely was not present on its
first delivery, was at length compelled to listen to it from the
lips of Corporal Trim.

CHAPTER IV

QUARREL WITH HIS UNCLE

1747-1751

These unusual honours which Sterne was receiving were
accompanied by no important advancement, owing, in the
first place, to dissensions in the Church of York. During the
crisis of 1745, the clergy suspended their petty differ-
ences and united against a common enemy in defence of the
House of Hanover and the Church of England. But no sooner
was the danger over, than they began once more to intrigue
against one another, each seeking his own advantage without
much regard to his associates. From the first there was
friction between the new archbishop and the new dean, the
one accusing the other of encroaching upon his rights and
prerogatives, with the result that two more or less distinct
parties were formed within the York Chapter. On the one
side were Archbishop Hutton and Dr. Jaques Sterne, with
their followers, men of the same age and similar political and
religious opinions. Against them were Dean Pountayne
and several of the more liberal canons and prebendaries,
including Laurence Sterne, who was an old college friend of
the dean. These antagonisms hastened what was sure to
come at some time, first an estrangement and then an open
and bitter quarrel between the two Sternes, uncle and
nephew. In 1747, or thereabouts, occurred a hot scene
between the two divines, in the course of which Sterne told
his uncle that he would write no more political paragraphs
for him. This scene very likely announced the end of the
newspaper established at York under the auspices of the
Whigs. "I * * * detested such dirty work", said Sterne
long afterwards, "thinking it beneath me". And to a friend
he wrote: "I am tired of employing my brains for other

people's advantage 'Tis a foolish sacrifice I have made for

87

88 LAURENCE STEENE

some years to an ungrateful person.". The same tale was
told by the wiseacres who gathered at the York coffee-
houses, only they added that the quarrel was really over "a
favourite mistress of the Precentor's", who loved Laurie too
well.

In return Dr. Sterne denounced his nephew as "un-
grateful and unworthy", and inveighed against him furiously
in letters to mutual friends. The nephew, if we interpret
aright a passage in Tristram Shandy, accused his uncle of
being at the head of "a grand confederacy" against him; of
playing the part, as it were, of Malice in a melodrama, who
sets on "Cruelty and Cowardice, twin ruffians" to waylay a
traveller in the dark. "The whole plan of the attack", says
the passage, "was put in execution all at once,— with so little
mercy on the side of the allies,— and so little suspicion in

Yorick, of what was carrying on against him, that when he

thought, good easy man ! full preferment was o 'ripening,

they had smote his root, and then he fell, as many a worthy
man had fallen before him." Yorick 's head was so bruised
and misshapen by these unhandsome blows that he declared,
quoting Sancho Panza, that should he recover and "Mitres
thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as thick as
hail, not one of them would fit it".

Though the quarrel had been long brewing, the first
serious blow, however, was struck, not at Sterne's head, but,
highwayman like, at his purse. As Prebendary of North
Newbald, Laurence Sterne preached in the cathedral twice
every year, on the sixth Sunday in Lent, and on the nine-
teenth Sunday after Trinity, when the harvesting of his
crops was over.* Prebendaries and other officials who from
sickness, distance, or disinclination found it impossible or
inconvenient to take their turns at preaching, were accus-
tomed to engage a brother living near by. Their agent in
the negotiations was sometimes John Hildyard, a York book-
seller, who knew everybody and whose shop in Stonegate
was a gathering place for the minor clergy. Sterne liked to

* A table of preachers containing Sterne's dates is given by Thomas
Ellway in Anthems** * as they are now Perform' d in the Cathedral
* * * of York * * * Durham * * * Lincoln (York, 1753)

QUARREL WITH HIS UNCLE 89

supply the places of others for the addition which it brought to
his income. Writing to his archdeacon in 1750, he said: "My
daughter will be Twenty Pounds a better Fortune by the
favours I've received of this kind * * * this Year; and as
so much at least is annually and without much trouble to be
picked up in our Pulpit, by any man who cares to make the
Sermons, you who are a Father will easily excuse my motive. ' '

It was no hard labour. The sermons were usually per-
functory, and Sterne could drive into York on a Sunday
morning, breakfast with a friend, preach in the cathedral,
and be back at Sutton or Stillington for the evening service.
It meant a little physical exertion; nothing more. Dean
Fountayne and various prebendaries, who were friends to
Sterne, gave him their less important turns, and even his
uncle down to 1750 permitted him to take his place on the
twenty-ninth of May, a day of thanksgiving for the restora-
tion of Charles the Second. All went on well until late in
the autumn of 1750, when Dr. Sterne suddenly awoke to the
fact that his nephew was earning too much in this business.
On All Saints of that year Sterne came in and preached for
the dean. It was a hollow and conventional sermon worked
over from Tillotson on the text, "For our conversation is in
heaven", and keyed to the tune: "Here we consider ourselves

only as pilgrims and strangers. Our home is in another

country, where we are continually tending; there our hearts
and affections are placed; and when the few days of our
pilgrimage shall be over, there shall we return, where a quiet
habitation and a perpetual rest is designed and prepared for
us for ever." Just after the sermon Sterne strolled into
Hildyard's shop to enquire about preaching a week or two
later for Francis Blackburne, Archdeacon of Cleveland in
succession to Dr. Sterne. Whereupon he discovered that his
uncle was intervening against this source of his supply.
There ensued a lively dialogue, which was broken off on the
word impudence by the entrance of Dr. William Herring,
the Chancellor of the diocese. Sterne related the whole story
of the angry encounter in a letter to his archdeacon, dated at
Sutton, November 3, 1750:

"I step'd," says Sterne, "into his [Hildyard's] shop

90 LAURENCE STERNE

just after Sermon on All Saints, when with an Air of much
Gravity and Importance, he beckon 'd me to follow him. into
an inner Room. No sooner had he shut the Dore, but with
the awful Solemnity of a Premier who held a Lettre de

Cachet upon whose Contents my Life or Liberty depended

after a Minut 's Pause he thus opens his Commission : ' Sir

My Friend the A. Deacon of Cleveland, not caring to

preach his Turn, as I conjectured, has left me to provide a
Preacher,. but before I can take any Steps in it with Re-
gard to you — I want first to know, Sir, upon what Footing

you and Dr. Sterne are?' — 'Upon what Footing!' 'Yes

Sir, How your Quarel stands?' '"What's that to you —

How our Quarel stands! What's that to you, you Puppy?'

'But Sir, Mr. Blackburn would know' 'What's that to

him?' 'But Sir, don't be angry, I only want to know of

you, whether Dr. Sterne will not be displeased in Case you

should preach' 'Go Look; I've just now been preaching

and you could not have fitter Opportunity to be satisfyed.' —
'I hope, Mr. Sterne, you are not Angry.' 'Yes I am; But
much more astonished at your Impudence.' I know not
whether the Chancellor's stepping in at this Instant and flap-
ping to the Dore, did not save his tender Soul the Pain of the
last Word. However that be, he retreats upon this unexpected
Rebuff, takes the Chancellor aside, asks his Advice, comes
back Submissive, begs Quarter, tells me Dr. Hering had quite
satisfyed him as to the Grounds of his Scruple (tho' not of his
Folly) and therefore beseeches me to let the Matter pass, and

to preach the Turn. When I as Percy complains in

Harry 4

1 — All smarting with my Wounds

To be thus pesterd by a Popinjay
Out of my Grief and my Impatience
Answerd neglectingly, I know not what

■ for he made me Mad

To see him shine so bright and smell so sweet

And talk so like a waiting Gentlewoman

— Bid him be Gone — and seek Another fitter for his Turn.

QTTARKEL WITH HIS UNCLE 91

"But as I was too angry to have the perfect Faculty of
recollecting Poetry, however pat to my Case, so I was forced

to tell him in plain Prose tho' somewhat elevated That I

would not preach, and that he might get a Parson wh[erever
he] could find one."

At this point, Hildyard produced his letter from the arch-
deacon with reference to the supply. After reading it and
finding that it contained only "a cautious hint" against
offending the precentor, Sterne cooled his angry humour and
decided to take the turn. Three days later, as he was on his
way to the postoffice with the letter from which we have
quoted, Sterne met the bookseller, who pressed him not to let
the matter transpire. Though Sterne "half promised" to
hold back the letter, he finally sent it, after opening it and
adding a strange postscript to the effect that it should do Mr.
Hildyard no harm. The next week Sterne again wrote to the
archdeacon, this time humbly apologising for his heat. "It
was my anger", he said finely, "and not me, so I beg this
may go to sleep in peace with the rest." But it was too late
for peace, though the archdeacon himself greatly wished it;
for Dr. Sterne was soon informed of what had occurred in
the bookseller's shop. On the sixth of the following Decem-
ber he signed the reprobation of his nephew in a letter to
Archdeacon Blackburne, beginning:
"Good Mr. Archdeacon,

"I will beg Leave to rely upon your Pardon for taking
the Liberty I do with you in relation to your Turns of
preaching in the Minster. "What occasions it, is Mr. Hild-
yard's employing the last time the only person unacceptable
to me in the whole Church, an ungrateful and unworthy
Nephew of my own, the Vicar of Sutton; and I shoud be
much obligd to you, if you woud please either to appoint
any person yourself, or leave it to your Eegister to appoint
one when you are not here. If any of my turns woud suit
you better than your own, I woud change with you."

Despite this brand upon him, it seemed far the moment
as if the Vicar of Sutton might win in the struggle with his
uncle. Joined with Dr. Sterne against him were Archbishop
Hutton and Dr. Francis Topham, the legal adviser to many

92 LAURENCE STERNE

of the clergy. For Mm were Dean Fountayne, Archdeacon
Blackburne, Chancellor Herring, and most of the active
men in the York chapter, including the two resident canons
— Charles Cowper and "William Berdmore, a man, said

Sterne, "of a gentle and pacific temper", and Jacob

Custobadie, registrar and chamberlain to the dean and chapter.
Besides all these sympathisers, a close friendship was forming
between Sterne and Thomas, fourth Viscount Fauconberg of
Newburgh Priory, in whose extensive manor lay Sutton-on-
the-Forest and other townships in the York valley. The vis-
count (created earl in 1756) was then a lord of his Majesty's
bedchamber and member of the Privy Council. His rank and
his age — he was above fifty years old — perhaps precluded the
easy intercourse that the Vicar of Sutton enjoyed with his
fellow canons and prebendaries. He was rather a patron to
whom Sterne looked for another and a better living. But
under the circumstances, any signal preferment was impos-
sible, for it would require the sanction of the Archbishop of
York, with whom the Vicar of Sutton was out of favour.
When, for example, the perpetual curacy of Coxwold, within
the nomination of Lord Fauconberg, became vacant in 1753,
Sterne had to be passed by for his former curate, Richard
"Wilkinson.

There were, however, within the sole gift of his friends
several small offices that might be bestowed upon him as a
mark of favour and confidence. Without hesitancy, Lord
Fauconberg led the way by appointing him Commissary of
the Peculiar and Spiritual Jurisdiction of Abie and Tollerton,

which included also Skelton and Wigginton parishes in the

North Riding over which the Fauconbergs had exercised,
under the Dean of York, important rights since the dissolu-
tion of the monasteries. On December 29, 1750, three weeks
after he had been denounced by his uncle, Sterne appeared at
the deanery, where he took the usual oaths and designated
his surrogates who were to act in his stead in case of absence.*
Six months later fell vacant the similar Commissaryship of

* The record of the appointment in the Diocesan Registry of York
is accompanied by memoranda of the annual visitations made by Sterne
and his surrogates, beginning in 1751 and ending in 1767.

QTJAEEEL WITH HIS UNCLE 93

the Peculiar Court of Pickering and Pocklington, which
formed a part of the dean's immediate jurisdiction, inde-
pendent of the archbishop or the York chapter. For this
office were pitted against each other Laurence Sterne and
Dr. Topham, his uncle's candidate. After a noisy clash of
arms, during which the lie was freely passed, Sterne received
the appointment, but only by engendering hatreds so acri-
monious that they could never be allayed. These two offices
that Sterne thus obtained were as much civil as ecclesiastical.
It was in both cases the incumbent's duty to make annual
visitations of the clergy within his jurisdiction for proving
wills and granting letters of administration, for swearing in
church wardens and receiving their presentments of eccle-
siastical offences, and for looking after the morals of the
district generally. The fees from the two commissaryships
both together amounted to but little. From the first Sterne
received in no year more than two pounds and some odd
shillings, and the second was estimated at only five or six
guineas. But they were much coveted by cathedral officials,
for they gave the incumbent an honourable position among
the clergy of the diocese as a direct representative of the
Dean of York and the lord of the manor.

It is not said how Dr. Sterne regarded these honours to
his ungrateful nephew or his appointment the year before
as chaplain to Sir "William Pennyman, whereby he was
enabled to preach an extraordinary sermon before an extra-
ordinary congregation in the great cathedral. But that they
set his wrath in a flame may be inferred from the brutal
course which he was now taking to crush him forever.
"When to justify a private appetite", says the author of
Tristram Shandy, conveying a passage from Archbishop
Tenison on Lord Bacon, "it is once resolved upon, that an
innocent and helpless creature shall be sacrificed, 'tis an easy
matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it
has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with". So it was
in this case. Sterne's ill treatment of his mother and sister
Catherine — still a persisting legend — had long been given out
by Dr. Sterne as the first cause of estrangement. After the
death of Roger Sterne, his widow and daughter, as has been

94 LAUEENCE STEENE

said in a previous chapter, settled on a government pension
at Clonmel in Ireland. Sometime in 1742 they came over to
England on hearing that Laurie had married an heiress.
For a time they were persuaded to live in Chester, but by
1747 or thereabouts, they moved to York, near what they
supposed was inexhaustible wealth. Thenceforth these un-
fortunate women were tossed to and fro in the quarrel, not
as any real cause of it but as available weapons. At various
times the nephew tried to patch up a friendship with his
uncle, but all attempts were vain. As early as 1747, he
wrote to Dr. Sterne, requesting him to arrange a conference
with his wife instead of himself, that there might be no
explosion of temper. And late in 1750, Dean Fountayne
sought to bring together mother, son, and uncle for a com-
plete understanding. This friendly mediation also failed.
Three months later Dr. Sterne struck his final blow. He
placed Mrs. Sterne and her daughter Catherine in some char-
itable institution at York, perhaps the workhouse or "the
common gaol", and then spread the report that they were
there by neglect of the Vicar of Sutton. Stunned by the
blow, Laurence Sterne at once sat down and wrote the fol-
lowing long letter, dated Sutton, April 5, 1751, to his uncle
in defence of his conduct :

"Sir, — 'Tis now three years since I troubled you with a
letter in vindication of myself in regard of my Mother, in
which that I might give you all imaginable conviction, how
barbarously she had dealt by me, and at the same time how
grossly she had deceived you by the misrepresentation which

I found she had made of my behaviour towards her 1

desired my wife might have leave to wait upon you to lay
the state of our circumstances fairly before you, and with
that the account of what we had done for my Mother, that
from a view of both together you might be convinced how
much my Mother has complained without reason.

"My motive for offering to send my wife rather than
myself upon this particular business, being first merely to
avoid the occasion of any heat which might arise betwixt you
and me upon any thing foreign to the Errand, which might
possibly disapoint the end of it and secondly as I had rea-

QTJAKREL WITH HIS UNCLE 95

son to think your passions were pre-engaged in this affair and
that the respect you owed my wife as a gentlewoman would
be a check against their breaking out ; and consequently that
you would be more likely to give her a candid hearing,
which was all I wished, and indeed all that a plain story
to be told without Art or Management could possibly stand
in want of. As you had thought proper to concern yourself
in my Mother's complaints against me, I took it for granted
you could not deny me so plain a piece of Justice, so that
when you wrote me word back by my servant 'You desired
to be excused from any conference with my wife, but that I

might appear before you' As I foresaw such an Interview

with the sense I had of such a treatment was likely to produce
nothing but an angry expostulation (which could do no good,
but might do hurt), I begged in my turn to be excused; and
as you had already refused so unexceptionable an offer of
hearing my defence, I supposed in course you would be silent
for ever after upon that Head; and therefore I concluded
with saying, 'as I was under no necessity of applying to you
and wanted no man's direction or advice in my own private
concerns, I would make myself as easy as I could, with the
consciousness of having done my Duty and of being able to
prove I had whenever I thought fit, and for the future that
I was determined never to give you any further trouble
upon the subject'.

"In this resolution I have kept for three years and
should have continued to the end of my life — but being told
of late by some of my friends that this clamour has been kept
up against me, and by as singular a Stroke of 111 design as
could be levelled against a defenceless man, who lives retired
in the country and has few opportunities of disabusing the
world ; that my Mother has moreover been fixed in that very
place where a hard report might do me (as a Clergyman) the

most real disservice* 1 was roused by the advice of my

friends to think of some way of defending myself, which I
own I should have set about immediately by telling my story
publickly to the world but for the following inconvenience,
that I could not do myself justice this way without doing

* ' ' The common gaol. ' '

96 LAURENCE STERNE

myself an injury at the same time by laying open the naked-
ness of my circumstances, which for aught I knew was likely
to make me suffer more in the opinion of one half of the
world than I could possibly gain from the other part of it by
the clearest defence that could be made.

"Under the distress of this vexatious alternative I went
directly to my old friend and college acquaintance, our
worthy Dean, and laid open the hardship of my situation,
begging his advice what I should best do to extricate myself.
His opinion was that there was nothing better than to have a
Meeting, face to face with you, and my Mother ; and with his
usual friendship and humanity he undertook to use his
best offices to procure it for me.

"Accordingly about three months ago he took an oppor-
tunity of making you this request, which he told me you
desired only to defer till the hurry of your Nunnery cause
was over.

"Since the determination of that affair he has put you in
mind of what you gave me hopes of, but without success ; you
having (as he tells me) absolutely refused now to hear one
word of what I have to say. The denying me this piece of
common right is the hardest measure that a man in my situa-
tion could receive, and though the whole inconvenience of it
may be thought to fall, as intended, directly upon me, yet I
wish, Dr. Sterne, a great part of it may not rebound upon
yourself. For why, may any one ask, why will you in-
terest yourself in a complaint against your Nephew if you
are determined against hearing what he has to say for him-
self ? — and if you thus deny him every opportunity he seeks
of doing himself justice ? Is it not too plain you do not wish
to find him justified, or that you do not care to lose the uses
of such a handle against him? However it may seem to
others, the case appearing in this light to me, it has deter-
mined me, contrary to my former promise 'of giving you no

further trouble' to add this, which is not to solicit again

what you have denyed me to the Dean, (for after what I
have felt from so hard a Treatment, I would not accept of it,

should the Offer come now from myself.) But my intent

is by a plain and honest narrative of my Behaviour, and my

QTTABBEL WITH HIS UNCLE 97

Mother's too, to disarm you for the future; being determined
since you would not hear me face to face with my accusers,
that you shall not go unconvinced or at least not uninformed
of the true state of the Case.

"Prom my Father's death to the time I settled in the
world, which was eleven years, my Mother lived in Ireland,
and as during all that time I was not in a condition to furnish
her with money, I seldom heard from her ; and when I did, the
account I generally had was, that by the help of an Em-
broidery school that she kept, and by the punctual payment
of her pension, which is £20 a year, she lived well, and would
have done so to this hour had not the news that I had married
a woman of fortune hastened her over to England.

1r flr "W tP tt tF * tF W

"The very hour I received notice of her landing at Liver-
pool I took post to prevent her coming nearer me, stayed
three days with her, used all the arguments I could fairly
to engage her to return to Ireland, and end her days with
her own relations.

"I convinced her that besides the interest of my wife's
fortune, I had then but a bare hundred pounds a year ; out
of which my ill health obliged me to keep a curate, that we
had moreover, ourselves to keep, and in that sort of decency
which left it not in our power to give her much; that what
we could spare she should as certainly receive in Ireland as
here; that the place she had left was a cheap country — her
native one, and where she was sensible £20 a year was more
than equal to thirty here, besides the discount of having her
pension paid in England where it was not due and the utter
impossibility I was under of making up so many deficiencies.

"I concluded with representing to her the inhumanity of
a Mother able to maintain herself, thus forcing herself as a
burden upon a Son who was scarce able to support himself
without breaking in upon the future support of another per-
son whom she might imagine was much dearer to me.

"In short I summed up all those arguments with making
her a present of twenty guineas, which with a present of
Cloathes etc. which I had given her the day before, I doubted

7

98 LAURENCE STEENE

not would have the effect I wanted. But I was much mistaken,
for though she heard me with attention, yet as soon as she
had got the money into her pocket, she told me with an air
of the utmost insolence 'That as for going back to live in
Ireland, she was determined to show me no such sport, that
she had found I had married a wife who had brought me
a fortune, and she was resolved to enjoy her share of it, and
live the rest of her days at her ease either at York or Chester. '

"I need not swell this letter with all I said upon the
unreasonableness of such a determination; it is sufficient to
inform you that, all I did say proving to no purpose, I was
forced to leave her in her resolution; and notwithstanding
so much provocation, I took my leave with assuring her ' That
though my Income was strait I should not forget I was a son,
though she had forgot she was a mother.'

"From Liverpool, as she had determined, she went with
my sister to fix at Chester, where, though she had little just
grounds for such an expectation, she found me better than my
word, for we were kind to her above our power, and common
justice to ourselves; and though it went hard enough down
with us to reflect we were supporting both her and my sister in
the pleasures and advantages of a township which for prudent
reasons we denied ourselves, yet still we were weak enough
to do it for five years together, though I own not without
continual remonstrances on my side as well as perpetual
clamours on theirs, which you will naturally imagine to have
been the case when all that was given was thought as much
above reason by the one, as it fell below the Expectations of
the other.

"In this situation of things betwixt us, in the year '44 my
sister was sent from Chester by order of my mother to York,
that she might make her complaints to you, and engage you
to second them in these unreasonable claims upon us.

"This was the intent of her coming, though the pretence
of her journey (of which I bore the expences) was to make
a month's visit to me, or rather a month's experiment of my

further weakness. She stayed her time or longer— was

received by us with all kindness, was sent back at my own
charge with my own servant and horses, with five guineas

QTTABREL WITH HIS UNCLE 99

which I gave her in her pocket, and a six and thirty piece
which my wife put into her hand as she took horse.

"In what light she represented so much affection and
generosity I refer to your memory of the account she gave you
of it in her return through York. But for very strong
reasons I believe she concealed from you all that was neces-
sary to make a proper handle of us both ; which double Game
by the bye, my Mother has played over again upon us, for
the same purposes since she came to York, of which you will
see a proof by and bye.

"But to return to my sister. As we were not able to give
her a fortune, and were as little able to maintain her as she
expected — therefore, as the truest mark of our friendship in
such a situation, my wife and self took no small pains, the
time she was with us to turn her thoughts to some way of
depending upon her own industry, in which we offered her
all imaginable assistance; first by proposing to her that, if
she would set herself to learn the business of a Mantuamaker,
as soon as she could get insight enough into it to make a Gown
and set up for herself, 'That we would give her £30 to begin
the world and support her till business fell in; or, if she
would go into a Milliner's shop in London, my wife engaged
not only to get her into a shop where she should have £10
a year wages, but to equip her with cloathes etc. properly for
the place; or lastly, if she liked it better, as my Wife had
then an opportunity of recommending her to the family of
one of the first of our Nobility — she undertook to get her a
creditable place in it, where she would receive no less than
eight or ten pounds a year wages with other advantages.'
My sister showed no seeming opposition to either of the two
last proposals till my wife had wrote and got a favourable an-
swer to the one, and an immediate offer of the other. It will
astonish you, Sir, when I tell you she rejected them with the
utmost scorn, telling me I might send my own children to
service when I had any, but for her part, as she was the
daughter of a gentleman, she would not disgrace herself but
would live as such. Notwithstanding so absurd an instance
of her folly, which might have disengaged me from any
further concern, yet I persisted in doing what I thought was

100 LAURENCE STEENE

right; and though after this the tokens of our kindness were
neither so great nor so frequent as before, yet nevertheless
we continued sending what we could conveniently spare.

"It is not usual to take receipts for presents made; so
that I have not many vouchers of that kind; and [as] my
Mother has more than once denyed the money I have sent her,
even to my own face, I have little expectation of such
acknowledgements as she ought to make. But this I solemnly
declare upon the nearest computation we can make, that in
money, cloathes, and other presents we are more than £90
poorer for what we have given and remitted to them. In one
of the remittances (which was the summer [of] my sisters
visit) and which as I remember was a small bill drawn for
£3 by Mr. Eicord upon Mr. Boldero,* after my Mother had
got the money in Chester for the bill, she peremptorily denied
the receipt of it. I naturally supposed some mistake of

Mr. Eicord in directing1 However that she might not be a

sufferer by the disappointment, I immediately sent another
bill for as much more; but withal said, as Mr. Eicord could
prove his sending her the Bill, I was determined to trace out
who had got my money ; , upon which she wrote word back
that she had received it herself but had forgot it. You will
the more readily believe this when I inform you, that in
December, '47, when my Mother went to your house to com-
plain she could not get a farthing from me, that she carried
with her ten guineas in her pocket, which I had given her but
two days before. If she could forget such a sum, I had
reason to remember it, for when I gave it I did not leave
myself one guinea in the house to befriend my wife, though
then within one day of her labour, and under an apparent
necessity of a man-midwife to attend her.

"What uses she made of this ungenerous concealment I

refer again to yourself But I suppose they were the same

as in my sister's case, to make a penny of us both.

"When I gave her this sum, I desired she would go and

acquaint you with it, and moreover took that occasion to tell

her I would give her £8 every year whilst I lived. The week

after she wrote me word she had been with you, and was

•Arthur Eicord, Sr., and John Boldero, gentlemen of York.

QUARKEL WITH HIS UNCLE _ 101

determined not to accept that offer unless I would settle the
£8 upon her out of my "Wife's fortune, and chargeable upon
it in ease my wife should be left a widow. This she added
was your particular advice, which without better evidence I
am not yet willing to believe ; because, though you do not yet
know the particulars of my Wife's fortune — you must know
so much of it, was such an event as my death to happen
shortly, without such a burden as this upon my widow and
my child, that Mrs. Sterne would he as much distressed, and
as undeservedly so as any widow in Great Britain: and
though I know as well as you and my Mother that I have a
power in law to lay her open to all the terrors of such a

melancholy situation that I feel I have no power in equity

or in conscience to do so ; and I will add in her behalf, con-
sidering how much she has merited at my hands as the best
of wives, that was I capable of being worried into so cruel
a measure as to give away hers, and her child's bread upon
the clamour which you and my Mother have raised — that I
should not only be the weakest but the worst man that ever
woman trusted with all she had.

^F iff *fp flr -lF *ar -IF 'Tr "ar

"Was I, Sir, to die this night, I have not more than the very
Income of £20 a year (which my mother enjoys) to divide
equally betwixt my Wife, a helpless child, and perhaps a
third unhappy sharer, that might come into the world some
months after its father's death to claim its part. The false
modesty of not being able to declare this, has made me thus
long a prey to my Mother, and to this clamour raised against
me ; and since I have made known thus much of my condition
as an honest man, it becomes me to add, that I think I have
no right to apply one shilling of my Income to any other
purpose but that of laying by a provision for my wife and
child: and that it will be time enough (if then) to add
somewhat to my Mother's pension of £20 a year when I have
as much to leave my Wife, who besides the duties I owe her
of a Husband and the father of a dear child, has this further
claim: — that she whose bread I am thus defending was the
person who brought it into the family, and whose birth and
education would ill enable her to struggle in the world without

102 LAUBENCE STERNE

it that the other person who now claims it from her, and

has raised us so much sorrow upon that score brought not one

sixpence into the family and though it would give me pain

enough to report it upon any other occasion, that she was the
daughter of no other than a poor Suttler who followed the
camp in Flanders, was neither born nor bred to the expecta-
tion of a fourth part of that the government allows her ; and
therefore has reason to be contented with such a provision,
though double the sum would be nakedness to my wife.

"I suppose this representation will be a sufficient answer
to any one who expects no more from a man than what the
difficulties under which- he acts will enable him to perform.
For those who expect more, I leave them to their expectations,
and conclude this long and hasty wrote letter, with declaring
that the relation in which I stand to you inclines me to
exclude you from the number of the last. For notwithstand-
ing the hardest measure that ever man received, continued on
your side without any provocation on mine, without ever once
being told my fault, or conscious of even committing one
which deserved an unkind look from you — notwithstanding
this, and the bitterness of ten years' unwearied persecution,
that I retain that sense of the service you did me at my first
setting out in the world, which becomes a man inclined to be
grateful, and that I am

"Sir,
"your once much obliged though now
"your much injured nephew,
"Laurence Sterne"

This "plain and honest narrative", exactly contemporary
with the incidents described in it, gives the lie direct to the
epigram of Horace Walpole's, so neatly expressed by Lord
Byron, who said, with reference to a scene in the Sentimental
Journey, that Sterne "preferred whining over a dead ass to
relieving a living mother". It likewise explains the tradi-
tion, coming from John Croft, that Sterne left his mother to
die in "the common gaol at York in a wretched condition, or
soon after she was released".* If she was confined there as a

* The story was told in its most complete form in a letter to George
Whatley, treasurer of the London Foundling Hospital, from the

QUARREL WITH HIS UNCLE 103

vagrant, it was by order of Dr. Sterne that he might do his
nephew, "as a clergyman, the most real disservice" in his
power. The letter is throughout a vindication of Sterne's
conduct, so far as there can be any vindication of a son's break
with his mother. Whatever else may be said of Sterne he
was no niggard. He gave his mother and sister freely of his
income and would have made it an allowance. It was neither
just nor reasonable to ask him to settle upon them an annuity
chargeable upon his wife's small estate. No one can have
any patience with his sister Catherine who refused the chance
to earn an honest living. His mother was no doubt vulgar,
turbulent, and untrustworthy, for Dr. Sterne himself, when
he had no motive to the contrary, spoke of her temper as
"clamourous and rapacious". And yet, to say the truth,
Sterne's vindication of himself, taken in the whole, does not
leave the best impression of his own character. It is difficult
to think of a son's casting a slur upon the birth of his mother,
however humble it may have been. For once Sterne's sense
of humour, to say the least, deserted him. A man of finer
grain would have taken in his mother and sister and made
the best of it. Mrs. Sterne and her daughter, once fixed in
York under the surveillance of Dr. Sterne, certainly gave
sufficient occasion for rumours, not wholly without justifica-
tion, of their neglect by the young Vicar of Sutton. Dr.
Sterne was thereby able to make the most of the strained
relations between mother and son, yet to continue a short
period, for stirring up further enmities and spreading the
report of them where they would do the most harm.

Rev. Daniel Watson, Vicar of Leake, near Coxwold, in Sterne's time.
Under date of January 10, 1776, Watson wrote:

"Shall I tell you what York scandal says? vis.: that Sterne, when
possessed of preferment of £300 a year, would not pay £10 to release
his mother out of Ousebridge prison, when poverty was her only fault,
and her character so good that two of her neighbours clubbed to set
her at liberty, to gain a livelihood, as she had been accustomed to do,
by taking in washing. Yet this was the man whose fine feelings gave
the world the story of Le Fevre and the Sentimental Journey. Do you
not feel as if something hurt you more than a cut across your finger
at reading this? Talking on benevolence, or writing about it, in the
most pathetic manner, and doing all the good you can without shew
and parade, are very different things."

This letter, then m possession of John Towill Rutt, was published
in The Monthly Bepository of Theology and General IMeratwre for
January, 1806.

CHAPTER V

PASTIMES AND FRIENDSHIPS

Sterne had not won in the long warfare with his uncle.
Such at least is the intimation that he wished to convey in
the sketch of Parson Yorick. "Yorick", he says, "fought it
out with all imaginable gallantry for some time; till, over-
powered by numbers, and worn out at length by the calamities
of the war, — but more so, by the ungenerous manner in which
it was carried on, — he threw down the sword; and though he
kept up his spirits in appearance to the last, he died, never-
theless, as was generally thought, quite brokenhearted."
Though Sterne did not literally die of a broken heart, he was
bruised and humbled to the dust. His friends, it is true, had
stood by him nobly through it all, but they were powerless
to help him in the way he most needed their help. Known
as he was among them as a gentleman of means, he could not
in his pride go to them and "lay open the nakedness" of his
condition; to no one except perhaps the dean, could he go
and say that his wife's fortune was in danger of being con-
sumed, and that he was scarce able to maintain himself on
the livings he held. The damp and depressing climate of the
York valley was working ruin to his delicate constitution, and
he longed for a parish among the hills ; but that was denied
him. Like Yorick he was compelled to throw down his sword
and retire to Sutton to bide his time. During the next few
years we are to imagine him as still in touch with his friends
at York and their intrigues, but as entering more completely
into the occupations and pastimes of a country parson. "If
you have three or four last Yorks Courants", runs a letter
written in the midst of parish business, to a friend in the
city, "pray send one to us, for we are as much strangers to
all that has pass'd amongst you, as if we were in a mine in
Siberia." Every summer he drove through the beautiful

104

5
1-3

S

PASTIMES AND FRIENDSHIPS 105

Yorkshire country to Alne and Pickering and other villages
within the jurisdiction of his commissaryships, for he per-
formed, as the records show, his visitations with scrupulous
regularity. He made friends everywhere. This is the period
of his friendships, amusements, and farming. He was shuf-
fling his cards anew for a last deal.

When Sterne, at the nadir of his fortunes, returned once
more to his farming, he felt again the gnawing of the old
land-hunger. He had, to be sure, no more capital to invest
in land; and not even enough to carry through the projects
that he was forming; for he conveyed, by lease and release
dated the fifth and the sixth of April, 1753, his freehold to
his friends Stephen Croft and Dr. Fountayne.* This con-
veyance, considering his straitened circumstances, can mean
only a second mortgage on the Tindall farm. But there are
sometimes, as Sterne well knew, ways of obtaining land with-
out purchase. In the eighteenth century, the favourite way
was an enclosure or deforesting Act. "What Sterne, unbiased
by self-interest, thought of these enclosures, which deprived
poor parishioners of fuel and pasturage, he has left on record
in Tristram Shandy. Mr. "Walter Shandy, it is there related,
rode out with his son on a morning "to save if possible a
beautiful wood, which the dean and chapter were hewing
down to give to the poor"; that is, says Sterne's footnote,
"to the poor in spirit, inasmuch as they divided the money
amongst themselves". But in his own case, none the less
for this opinion, Sterne could waive all scruples against harm-
ing the poor of his parish. At that time Sutton formed a
part of the demesne of Lord Fauconberg of Newburgh Priory.
Besides being lord of the manor, the earl was also "seized of
several cottages, frontsteads, lands, and tenements" within
the township. The second large landowner was the squire,
Philip Harland, who, in addition to his "divers freehold
messuages", had inherited from his father a lease of the
rectory, including the greater tithes. Third in the list came
Sterne as vicar of the parish and as owner of a "freehold
messuage" in his own right. The three men, working
together, easily obtained, through the influence of Lord

* The conveyance was registered at Northallerton on May 2, 1753.

106 LAURENCE STERNE

Fauconberg, an Act of Parliament for enclosing most of those
lands of Sutton which had long lain common.

The lands in question consisted, say the Articles of Agree-
ment* bearing date January 15, 1756, of "six common
Fields", containing "Thirteen Hundred Acres of Land, or
upwards, and called or known by the Names of the North-
field, Enhams, Murton-field, Thorp-field, South-field and
West-field, * * * also certain common Meadow Grounds
* * * called White-Car-Ings, Bsk, and Sharoms, and also
certain large and extensive Commons, called Brown Moor,
Stoekhill Sykes, Three Nook piece, Hinderlands, the Woods",
and other pieces, the names of which were not well known.
There were three thousand acres altogether. Commissioners,
duly authorised by the Act, were appointed to make the allot-
ments within three years after its passage. By the terms of
the final instrument, which was enrolled in the registry office
at Northallerton on March 23, 1759, Sterne received in his
own right, exclusive of what was due to him as vicar of the
parish, six parcels of land, comprising full sixty acres, with
the buildings thereon. Sterne came out of the transaction
as well as if he had been one of the commissioners himself.
All of his allotments, as finally arranged, were close together
in the North-field on the north side of the road through the
village, not far from the rectory and, it would seem, near the
Tindall farm, of which he had long been the owner. For
Sterne's benefit Philip Harland exchanged with him three
closes in the North-field for a more distant allotment; and
Lord Fauconberg most generously resigned all right and title
to two tenements separated from the parsonage only by the
church and churchyard. By the favours of his friends,
Sterne was thus lifted into a small country squire who culti-
vated his lands and had cottages for his labourers. In the
meantime he was growing, in rivalry to the squire, huge
crops of wheat, barley, oats and potatoes, bringing under the
plough new fields that had been used hitherto for pasturage.

As a relief to farming and the cure of souls, Sterne
enjoyed many hours and days of careless relaxation. Com-

*The Articles of Agreement are recited in the preamble to the
Sutton Enclosure Act.— Private Acts of Parliament, 29 George II, c. 10.

PASTIMES AND FEIENDSHIPS 107

mon interest had brought together the parson and the squire
on a better footing than formerly, though they may never
have quite understood each other. It was but a few steps
for either across the road for a chat over their crops and
cattle. Between Sterne and the Crofts, nothing ever occurred
to ruffle their friendship. The parson and his wife were ever
familiar guests at Stillington Hall on an evening for supper
and for jests and story-telling by the fireside. At this period,
too, the Sternes were beginning to drive over to Newburgh
Priory for dinners, choice wines, and Lady Catherine's parties
at quadrille, a fashionable game of cards which had displaced
the royal ombre of Pope's day. Earlier we caught just a
glimpse of Sterne skating over the marshes of Stillington
Common, and shooting partridges on a Sunday afternoon,
while his congregation was already seated in church waiting
for his appearance after the slaughter should be over. To
these old-time amusements he now added painting.

That Sterne was a painter before he wrote Tristram
Shandy, must have been surmised by every reader of the
book; for he therein employs so easily the technical terms of
the art for running up parallels on the mechanics of literary
expression, or for describing the poise and movement of his
characters — whether it be Corporal Trim standing in the
kitchen, hat in hand, as he announces to Susannah and the
scullions that "Bobby is dead and buried", or it be Mrs.
Shandy listening at a keyhole to the conversation of her hus-
band and my uncle Toby, in the attitude of "the Listening
Slave with the Goddess of Silence at his back". On his
famous mock dedication to any duke, marquis, or earl in his
Majesty's dominions who may have fifty pounds to pay for
it, Sterne remarks: "The design, your Lordship sees, is good,

the colouring transparent, the drawing not amiss ;

or to speak more like a man of science, and measure my

piece in the painter's scale, divided into 20, 1 believe, my

Lord, the outlines will turn out as 12, — the composition as 9, —
the colouring as 6, — the expression 13 and a half, — and the
design — if I may be allowed, my Lord, to understand my own
design, and supposing absolute perfection in designing, to be
as 20, 1 think it cannot well fall short of 19. Besides all

108 LAUEENCE STERNE

this, there is keeping in it, and the dark strokes in the

Hobby-Horse, (which is a secondary figure, and a kind of
back-ground to the whole) give great force to the principal
lights in your own figure, and make it come off wonderfully ;

and besides, there is an air of originality in the tout

ensemble." Some pages onward Sterne tells us that "good
jolly noses" in "well proportioned faces, should comprehend
a full third — that is, measured downwards from the setting
on of the hair". He has a hit by the way at "the honourable
devices which the Pentagraphic Brethren of the brush have
shewn in taking copies". Their mechanical methods, he
avers, have been stolen by "the great historians", who insist
upon drawing full-length portraits "against the light": a
method, it may be added, that "is illiberal, — dishonest, — and
hard upon the character of the man who sits". He was out
of patience with the cant about "the colouring of Titian, the
expression of Bubens, the grace of Raphael, * * * the cor-
regiescity of Corregio, * * * or the grand contour of An-
gelo". Sterne nevertheless appreciated from afar the early
masters and made a fine paragraph upon them in reference
to the dash and the sudden silence of the author that comes
with it at the moment the reader would have him go on :

"Just Heaven ! how does the Poco piu and the Poco meno
of the Italian artists; the insensible more or less, deter-
mine the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as in
the statue ! How do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil,
the pen, the fiddle-stick, et caetera, — give the true swell, which

gives the true pleasure ! 0 my countrymen ! — be nice ; — be

cautious of your language ; — and never, 0 ! never let it be
forgotten upon what small particles your eloquence and your
fame depend."

The amateur's first ideal was Hogarth, who could convey
to the mind as much by three lines as others by three hun-
dred. The Analysis of Beauty, out in 1753, Sterne recom-
mended to his readers and, more to the point, carried over
into Tristram Shandy its opinions and phrasing for praise
and banter. He was particularly struck by Hogarth's
pyramid and dark serpentine line on one of its faces, an
ornament to the title-page, and by what was said of them

PASTIMES AND FKIENDSHIPS 109

thereafter as the beginning and end of all harmony, grace,
and beauty. Beyond doubt Sterne had in mind Hogarth's
distinction between the statue with its stiff lines and the
living man who may conform to the line of beauty, when he
placed Corporal Trim, with sermon in hand, before Dr. Slop
and the Shandys:

"He stood, for I repeat it, to take the picture of him in

at one view, with his body swayed, and somewhat bent for-
wards, his right leg from under him, sustaining seven-
eighths of his whole weight, the foot of his left leg, the de-
fect of which was no disadvantage to his attitude, advanced a
little, — ; — not laterally, nor forwards, but in a line betwixt
them ; — his knee bent, but that not violently, — but so as to fall
within the limits of the line of beauty ; — and I add, of the line
of science too ; — for consider, it had one eighth part of his body
to bear up ; — so that in this case the position of the leg. is
determined,' — because the foot could be no farther advanced,
or the knee more bent, than what would allow him, mechanic-
ally to receive an eighth part of his whole weight under it,
and to carry it too.

"This I recommend to painters: need I add, to

orators? 1 think not; for unless they practise it,

they must fall upon their noses. ' '

Sterne's humour for painting, when he became tired of
shooting partridges, greatly puzzled his parishioners. From
their point of view, wrote John Croft thirty years after:
"They generally considered him as crazy or crackbrained.
At one time he wou'd take up the Gun and follow shooting
till he became a good shott, then he wou'd take up the Pencil
and paint Pictures. He chiefly copied Portraits. He had a
good Idea of Drawing, but not the least of mixing his colours.
There are severall Pictures of his painting at York, such as
they are. ' ' Among these portraits, most of which have disap-
peared, was a caricature of Mrs. Sterne, signed "Pigrich
ffecit] "; "in character of execution very like", said one who
saw it, "to Hogarth's Politician".* Nathaniel Hawthorne,
who came across the sketch in the upper rooms of a bookseller
at Old Boston, thought it the oddest thing in a "treasury
* Notes and Queries, third series, VII, 53.

HO LAURENCE STERNE

of antiquities and curiosities". "There was", he said in
bringing his catalogue to a close "a crayon-portrait of
Sterne's wife, looking so haughty and unamiable, that the
wonder is, not that he ultimately left her, but how he ever
contrived to live a week with such an awful woman."* This
Hogarthian caricature was afterwards engraved for Paul
Stapfer's Laurence Sterne, but on second thought it was
suppressed.

By driving into York Sterne might pass an afternoon any
day with a congenial fellow-craftsman, a certain Thomas
Bridges, who was a dry wit like himself. Each painted the
other on the same canvas — Sterne as clown and Bridges as
quack-doctor, standing upon a platform and humbugging a
crowd at a fair. Bridges holds in his outstretched right
hand a phial of his tincture, between thumb and forefinger,
while gravely lauding its virtues as a panacea. Sterne, a
youthful face in skull cap and ruff, hat in hand, seems ready
to break into a jest at the expense of his serious companion.
A medicine chest lies open between them; and in the back-
ground is a pretty street scene at York, terminating in the
spire of one of the churches. "When last heard of, this double
caricature was owned by Dr. James Atkinson (1759-1839), a
York surgeon and bibliographer. He received it from his
father, who was a friend of Sterne. Dr. Atkinson showed the
portrait to Thomas Frognall Dibdin when at York in 1820,
and permitted him to have it engraved for his Bibliographical
Tour, whence it has come down to us in a good plate. Dibdin
described the original as "a coarse production in oil" and
yet "a most singular original picture".*

For a year or more Sterne had the rare good fortune of
associating with Christopher Steele and his apprentice George
Romney, who set up their joint studio at York in the autumn
of 1756. Steele made a portrait of Sterne, and Eomney after-
wards "painted several scenes from Tristram Shandy",
among which one had as subject Dr. Slop's arrival at Shandy
Hall, bespattered with mud — a caricature, it is thought, of

* "Pilgrim to Old Boston" in Our Old Some.

* Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the Northern
Counties of England and Scotland, I, 213 (London, 1838).

PASTIMES AND FRIENDSHIPS m

Dr. Burton himself, whom Eomney likely knew. These, said
Kichard Cumberland, were raffled off by Eomney for what he
could get for them in his days of poverty.* The Dr. Slop,
it is certain, was so disposed of at Kendal. No further details
of the comradeship are surely known, though tradition has it
that Sterne liked Eomney better than Steele, and would have
sat to him but for offending the elder colleague. Perhaps
Sterne studied with them, for he learned from some source
a new manner. Caricature in imitation of Hogarth, he con-
tinued to practise, it is true, down to the end of his life.
A jolly tail-piece — two cocks fighting — to a pamphlet of 1759
is likely Sterne's; and for the amusement of his friends, he
illustrated a copy of the Sentimental Journey. But along
with sketches of this kind, he tried his hand at ideal por-
traits in sylvan background, a few of which, though of later
date, seem to have survived. While at Eome in 1766, Sterne
apparently met Michael Wodhull of Thenford, the translator
of Euripides, who was preparing for the press a collection of
original poems, some of which had been issued as pamphlets.
"When the volume appeared in 1772, it contained three illus-
trations (not in the pamphlets) bearing on the left corner
the name of "L. Stern del Eomae", and on the right the name
of I. A. Faldoni, evidently a misprint for G. A. Faldoni, a
well-known engraver of the period. Over these designs of
"L. Stern" hangs a mystery that has never been cleared up.
It is just possible that they were made by a name-sake of
Sterne's — one Lewis Stern (1708-77), who is said to have
painted "game and other birds, flowers, fruit, and scriptural
subjects in admirable style ".t On the other hand, they were
attributed to Laurence Sterne, without question, in the first
collected edition of his works, brought out by his original
publishers in 1780. If the curious designs are Sterne's,
they show the humour of the author who did not care to
illustrate his own works for the public, but was quite willing
to aid a friend. One of them represents a dryad reclining by
a sedgy stream and gazing upon an Arcadian landscape.
Another, adorning an ode to the Muses, has Pegasus in the

* Ewopean Magazine, June, 1803.

t Notes and Queries, third series, VII, 53.

H2 LAUKENCE STERNE

foreground before the spring Hippocrene, which has just
gushed from the solid rock in abundant streams, under the
blow of his hoof, still uplifted ; and above rises Mount Heli-
con, thickly wooded up to the temple of the Muses, whither
travellers are climbing their way. Much in the same style
is the third sketch for a stanza or two in an ode to Miss Sarah
Fowler, the loveliest of all maids in the train of the Graces.
Poesy stands erect, with lyre resting on her left arm, by a
glassy pool that reflects her beauty; and above her head,
encircled with a myrtle wreath, hover a group of cupids.
With face turned towards Poesy, a deep-breasted nymph —
is it Miss Sarah Fowler ? — reclines on an urn, from the mouth
of which she is pouring a libation of crystal waters into the
stream beneath.

During these years of painting when Sterne frequently
went into York for a day with Bridges or Steele and Romney,
he formed a close friendship with "the Rev. Mr. Blake", a
brother of the cloth with whom he had long been acquainted.
The clergyman in question, never yet identified, was beyond
doubt the Reverend John Blake, a son of Zachary Blake,
rector of Goldsborough and master of the Royal Grammar
School in the Horse Fair near York. Ten years younger
than Sterne, John Blake graduated from Christ Church,
Oxford, Bachelor of Arts in 1743, and Master of Arts in 1746.
While still a student at Oxford, he was ordained deacon by
the Archbishop of York on June 9, 1745; and priest on
June 14, 1747. Hisdong residence at the university indicates
that he was preparing himself for the instruction of youth.
But in the meantime he served curacies at Wigginton, a small
parish on the road midway between York and Sutton, and at
St. Saviour's, an ancient church within the city. On Decem-
ber 2, 1756, he was collated by the Archbishop of York to the
living of Catton, on the river Derwent, a few miles above
Elvington, the seat of Sterne's ancestors. His father becom-
ing superannuated by this time, he succeeded him in the
Royal Grammar School, under license of the dean and chap-
ter, on May 13, 1757* Blake was not only a scholar fully

* With the exception of his election to the grammar school, all of
Blake's ecclesiastical appointments, including his admission to holy
orders, are recorded in the Institutions of the York Diocese.

PASTIMES AND FKlENDSHIPS H3

equipped for his post; he was also an active citizen whose
name appears at intervals in the York Courcmt, as manager
of the charity schools and contributor to the county hospital.

Through the summer and autumn of 1758, Sterne and
Blake were engaged in a brisk correspondence, which was car-
ried on by special messengers between York and Sutton. At
that time the young master of the grammar school was in sore
distress over the miscarriage of proposals for the hand of a
"Miss Ash", a small heiress, living across the street with her
widowed mother. The woman whom he wished to marry was
perhaps Margaret, daughter of Elizabeth Ash, widow, who is
described in her will as residing in the parish of St. John's,
Micklegate, and possessing an estate at Tollerton. Sterne,
who was called in for advice about the marriage settlement,
warned his friend against a crafty grandmother, and an un-
scrupulous lawyer and justice of the peace, one John Stan-
hope, who was trying to enter the case. "The whole
appears", wrote Sterne, remembering his Eabelais, "what I
but too shrewdly suspected, a contexture of plots against
your fortune and person, grand mama standing first in the
dramatis personae, the Loup Garou, or raw head and bloody
bones, to frighten Master Jacky into silence, and make him go

to bed with Missy, supperless and in peace Stanhope, the

lawyer, behind the scenes, ready to be call'd in to do his part,
either to frighten or outwit you, in case the terror of grand
mama should not do the business without him. Miss's part
was to play them off upon your good nature in their turns,
and give proper reports how the plot wrought. But more of
this allegory another time. In the meanwhile, our stedfast
council and opinion is, to treat with Stanhope upon no
terms either in person or proxy. * * * Keep clear of him
by all means, and for this additional reason, namely, that
was he call'd in either at first or last, you lose the advantage
as well as opportunity of an honorable retreat which is in
your power the moment they reject your proposals, but will
never be so again after you refer to him." Sterne's guiding
hand seemed at times to be bringing the affair to a happy
conclusion, but in the end he was unable to cope with the
strategy of the astute lawyer; for Blake did not marry his

8

114 LAUBENCE STERNE

"Miss Ash"; and the Margaret Ash, with whom we have
identified her, became the wife of William Clark of Good-
manham, Yorkshire, where, according to the will of her
mother,* which was drawn by Stanhope, Mrs. Elizabeth
Ash held the right of presentation to the parish church and
rectory.

"Mrs. Ash and Miss" were much annoyed, there are
reasons for thinking, by the interference of the Vicar of Sut-
ton. When Blake came out to Sutton to dine and confer
with Sterne, it was his custom to make a secret of it to "the
ladies over the way"; and when Sterne, obedient to his
friend's "whistle", hurried off to York, he sometimes chose
the evening, that he might not be discovered by those whom
he would not fall in with for "fifty pounds". There were
harmless secrets, too, which the vicar wished to keep from
Mrs. Sterne. "I tore off", runs an exquisite passage in a
letter to Blake, "I tore off the bottom of yours before I let
my wife see it, to save a Lye. However, she has since
observed the curtailment, and seem'd very desirous of know-
ing what it contain 'd — which I conceal, and only said 'twas
something that no way concerned her or me; so say the same
if she interrogates." Tell a lie to save a lie is a saying that
would have done honour to Lord Bacon. The philosopher's
tell a lie to find a troth lacks the colour as well as the humour
of the clergyman's mandate to his brother in the cure of souls.

Eventually Sterne found it inconvenient to have Blake's
letters lying about the rectory, and so he burned them one by
one as they arrived and were read. On the other hand, Blake
preserved those he received from Sterne. Forty years ago
they were owned by Mr. A. H. Hudson of York, who remem-
bers them "as very long, written upon foolscap, and very
amusing". From him they passed into a private collection,
and thence to a dealer who disposed of them singly. Incom-
plete, mutilated, and out of chronological order, they were
published by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald in his memoir of Sterne.

Despite their incompleteness, these letters to Blake are
quite sufficient to let us into what Sterne was doing near the

* The will of Mrs. Elizabeth Ash was proved in the Prerogative
Court of York, Jan. 22, 1774.

PASTIMES AND FBIENDSHIPS 115

close of his residence at Sutton. Extracts from them have
already been quoted for Sterne's ventures in farming. The
life of a rural parson, one may see, was fast becoming irksome
to him. Though the year brought large returns in oats and
barley, the harvesting and threshing of his grain, which at
one time seemed in danger of sprouting, kept him at home
away from his friends at York. Once or twice he complained
of bad roads and bad weather, of which he stood in mortal
terror, for the damps of the York valley brought on his cough
and asthma. One rainy night it was ten o'clock before the
vicar and his wife reached Sutton after a visit to York
"owing to vile accidents to which Journiers are exposed".

Again on a morning when they were ready to take a wheel
into the city to be with their friend on his birthday, they
were prevented by a terrible downpour. So in the afternoon
Sterne sent into York his "sinful Amen" — the facetious
name for his clerk — to tell Blake how the matter stood
and to say that he was considering the affair with Miss Ash
"in all its shapes and circumstances". We really would
have come in person, said Sterne, if we could. "We have
waited dress 'd and ready to set out ever since nine this
morning, in hopes to snatch any Intermission of one of the
most heavy rains I ever knew,^-but we are destined not to

go, for the day grows worse and worse upon our hands,

and the sky gathering in on all sides leaves no Prospect of any
but a most dismal going and coming, and not without danger,

as the roads are full of Water What remains, but that we

undress ourselves and wish you absent, what we would most

gladly have wish'd you present all Happiness and many

fair and less ominous Birth Days, than our prospect affords
us." "I wish to God", to combine other letters, "you could
some day ride out next week, and breakfast and dine with us.
* * * However, I will come over at your desire, but it cannot
be tomorrow, because all hands are to be employed in cutting
my barley, which is now shaking with this vile wind how-
ever, the next day (Friday) I will be with you by twelve and
eat a portion of your own dinner and confer till three o'clock,
in case the day is fair, if not the day after, &c, &c."

To free himself from local entanglements, Sterne was

116 LAURENCE STERNE

planning to lease his lands and tithes, in the expectation of
peace and happiness for the next year and ever after. But
that was not yet. His affairs, he complained, had been
thrown into utter confusion by a parliamentary election that
took place in the autumn of 1758. To add to Sterne 's worries,
the health of his daughter Lydia, now eleven years old, was
causing him great anxiety. On rising one morning with the
intention of an early start for York, he found Lydia so far
relapsing that he sent a messenger instead with "two gooses"
to say that he must "stay and wait till the afternoon to see if
my poor girl can be left. She is very much out of all sorts ;
and our operator here, though a very penetrating man, seems
puzzled about her case. If something favourable does not
turn out to-day about her case, I will send for Dealtry",
that is, Dr. John Dealtry, a "Whig physician at York. His
own health, too, was fast breaking under the strain.

Sterne nevertheless managed to ride into York every week
or two except in the harvest season. He took his own turn
in the cathedral on the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity,
coming in early for breakfast with Blake ; and he was again
forced out of his "shell in Xmas week to preach Innocents"
in place of Thomas Hurdis, Prebendary of Strensall. The
sermon on the latter occasion seems to have been the one
entitled The Character of Herod, as published in the usual
collections. Sterne set out with "Rachel weeping for her
children", but soon broke from his text and the scant Biblical
narrative for a portrait of Herod on the lines of Josephus.
Herod's complicated character — his generosity and munifi-
cence and cruelty— was "summed up in three words— That
he was a man of unbounded ambition, who stuck at nothing
to gratify it". The preacher closed with a story to the point
out of Plutarch, followed by a wish that God in his mercy
might "defend mankind from future experiments" in the
slaughter of innocent people.

When Mrs. Sterne accompanied her husband into York
for a day with their friends or "to make her last marketings
for the year", one or both of them would dine with Thomas
Bridges and his wife, or at the house of the Bev. Charles
Cowper, Prebendary of Riccall. Sterne rather preferred to

PASTIMES AND FRIENDSHIPS H7

leave his wife with Mrs. Cowper on an afternoon, and to go
by himself to the concert at the Assembly Kooms, not only
for the music but for a chat with Marmaduke Pothergill the
younger, or other friends that he was likely to fall in with
there. In the round of visits he took in Dr. Fountayne, if
the dean were in town, Jack Taylor, Mr. Blake, and "my
poor mother", whose "affair", says a letter, "is by this time
ended, to our comfort, and, I trust, hers". After a long
period of misunderstanding and estrangement, a reconcilia-
tion between mother and son had evidently been brought
about by her acceptance of the allowance that was offered
to her many years before. Blake, it would seem, from
a dark hint or two, had acted as mediator. For some
purpose, at any rate, he was doling out money at York and
sending accounts of it over to Sutton. If Sterne had time,
it was his custom, though the letters say nothing about it, to
stroll into the coffee-room of the George, a fine old hostelry
in Coney Street, "where those who drank little wine and did
not choose too much expence, might read the newspapers".
To those who liked to sit there and gossip, he was well known
for "a number of pleasant repartees", one of which has
survived. The general drift of the story is probably true,
for Sterne let it pass and Hall-Stevenson repeated an
abridgement of it in the memoir of his friend.

"There was", according to the more elaborate version of
the newspapers,* "a troop of horse in the town, and a gay
young fellow, spoiled by the free education of the world, but
with no real harm in him, was one of the officers. This gay
boy, who loved all freedom in discourse, therefore hated a
parson. Poor Yorick was obliged to hear healths he did not
like; and would only shuffle about, or pretend deafness; but
the hour was come, when these pretences were to pass no
longer. The captain was in the middle of a Covent-garden
story, loud, indecent, and profane in his expressions; when
poor Yorick entered, he stopped on a sudden, and began, with
all possible contempt and ill usage, to abuse the clergy, fixing
his eye on Yorick, and pointing to him as an example on
every occasion. Yorick pretended, as long as he could with

* For example, The London Chronicle, May 3-6, 1760.

118 LAUBENCE STEENE

any decency, not to hear his rudeness ; but when that became
impossible, he walked up and gravely said to him: 'Sir, I'll
tell you a story. My father is an officer; and he's so brave
himself, that he is fond of everything else that's brave, even
to his dog; you must know we have at this time one of the
finest creatures in the world, of this kind; he is the hand-
somest dog you ever saw, the most spirited in the world, and
yet the best natured that can be imagined; so lively, that he
charms everybody; but he has a cursed trick that spoils all;

he never sees a clergyman, but he instantly flies at him.'

'Pray how long has he had that trick?' says the captain.

'Sir,' replies Yorick, 'ever since he was a Puppy.' " "The
young man", adds Hall-Stevenson, "felt the keenness of the
satire, turned upon his heel, and left Sterne in triumph."

II

Whenever Sterne felt the need of more complete relaxa-
tion than was afforded by York and the neighbouring squires,
he had but to take a trip to Scarborough, or to drive over to
Skelton for a week or a fortnight with his friend John Hall-
Stevenson. On these excursions his wife never went with
him. Sterne and Hall-Stevenson, when we last saw them
together, were reading Rabelais under the great walnut tree
at Jesus College. John Hall — his friend always dropped the
Stevenson — was a son of Joseph Hall of Durham by Catha-
rine, sister and heir to Lawson Trotter of Skelton Castle.
After trifling away three or four years at Cambridge, the
young man left the university without a degree, and made the
usual tour of France and Italy. Returning home towards
1740, he married in that year Anne, daughter of Ambrose
Stevenson, Esq., of the Manor House in the parish of Lan-
chester, Durham, and assumed his wife's surname along with
his own. In after times he regarded the act as "premature",
for his wife's property fell short of his expectations. But
as if to make amends for his own want of foresight, his
mother died a few months after his marriage ; and his uncle,
Lawson Trotter, "a noted Jacobite", was soon driven from
the country for the part he took in the insurrection of 1745.

PASTIMES AND FRIENDSHIPS H9

Skelton thus passed by right of his mother to Hall-Stevenson
as the eldest son, then barely twenty-eight years old. While
Sterne was wielding a pen for the House of Hanover, Hall-
Stevenson was brandishing a sword. After the battle of
Preston Pans, he formed the neighbouring bucks into a com-
pany of horsemen under General Oglethorpe, who was back
from Georgia. They were all finely mounted, wrote a York
merchant of the time, "with every man a horse and some
two", and they acted as "a flying squadron, to harass the
enemy on their march and to give intelligence". "They
make more noise here", it is significantly added, "than they
deserve, their number being much magnified."* The event-
ful period over, Hall-Stevenson settled at Skelton, where he
continued to the end of his days in the easy, self-indulgent
life which he had begun at Cambridge, complaining now and
then of his scant fortune and of a mortgage of £2000 on his"
estate to a younger brother.

Hall-Stevenson possessed "a fine library", rich in old
tomes running back into the sixteenth century, among which
he sat and read on dull days and long winter evenings, now
and then scribbling a political satire, or loose verse-tale in
imitation of La Fontaine and other French fabulists, which
were issued in the form of anonymous pamphlets with notes
and quotations from Homer, Vergil, and Lucian. There was
commonly a facetious dedication to himself, as the man he
most respected, to the vacant reader, or to the macaronies of
Medmenham Abbey and Pall Mall. The author made no
claim to finished verse, writing,- he said, like Grisset, only
to save himself from ennui. Horace Walpole discovered "a
vast deal of original humour and wit" in Mr. Hall's verses;
but to Gray they "seemed to be absolute madness". Here
and there they contain clever phrases, as in the opening lines

* "Letter of Stephen Thompson, a merchant, to Vice- Admiral
[Henry] Medley" in Beport on Manuscripts of Lady du Cane presented
to Parliament by Command of his Majesty, 77-78 (London, 1905).
A fine account of Hall-Stevenson is given by J. W. Ord, History and
Antiquities of Cleveland (London, 1846). See also Surtees, Durham,
II, 291-92; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, HI, 86-88; Alexander Carlyle,
Autobiography, 453-54 (Edinburgh, 1860) ; and Paver, Supplement to
Consolidated Yorkshire Visitations (British Museum, Additional MS
29651).

120 LATJBENCE STERNE

of a reply to a savage attack by Smollett in the Critical

Review:

"Ye judging Caledonian Pedlars,
That to a scribbling World give Law
Laid up engarretted, like Medlars,
Eipening asperity in Straw."

In his humour, Hall-Stevenson renamed his seat Crazy
Castle. It was a rambling pile of stone rising in a series of
moss-covered terraces from a stagnant and melancholy moat,
the abode of frogs and water-rats, and lying on the slope
of a wooded ravine, two miles and a half inland from Salt-
burn-by-the-Sea. At one time, its master planned extensive
restorations, but Sterne dissuaded him from them, saying, in
remembrance of his own repairs at Sutton, that "the sweet
visions of architraves, friezes and pedaments" were but the
bait of the devil to lead one on into cares, curses and debts.
Better follow, he admonished his friend, the advice of St. Paul
to his disciples, that they should "sell both coat and waistcoat
and go rather without shirt or sword, than leave no money
in their scrip to go to Jerusalem with", that is, to London or
Paris or any place where congregate fashion and pleasure.
For the amusement of his friends and Lawson Trotter, who
was travelling abroad, Hall-Stevenson made a sketch of the
castle, or had it made, as a frontispiece to a volume of Crazy
Tales, which opened with a facetious verse-description of
some of the details. Midway in the description, the verses
hobble on —

"A turrit also you may note,

Its glory vanish 'd like a dream,

Transform 'd into a pigeon-coat,

Nodding beside the sleepy stream.

"Over the Castle hangs a tow'r,
Threatening destruction ev'ry hour,
Where owls, and bats, and the jackdaw,
Their Vespers and their Sabbath keep,
All night scream horribly, and caw,
And snore all day, in horrid sleep.

PASTIMES AND FEIENDSHIPS 121

"Oft at the quarrels and the noise
Of scolding maids or idle boys ;
Myriads of rooks rise up' and fly,
Like Legions of damn'd souls,

As black as coals,
That foul and darken all the sky."

A very handsome and agreeable young man, Hall-
Stevenson was thoroughly liked by friends and chance-
acquaintance, for whom "he kept a full-spread board and
wore down the steps of his cellar". Alexander Carlyle, the
Scotch divine, who crossed his path at the Dragon Inn,
Harrogate, thought him "a highly accomplished and well-
bred gentleman", and was drawn to him by a "mild and
courteous manner". Mrs. Sterne, who saw him occasionally
for a day at Sutton, had some misgivings about her husband's
intimacy with him; but she readily admitted that he was
"a fellow of wit, though humorous; a funny, jolly soul,
though somewhat splenetic; and (bating the love of women)
as honest as gold". It is a little strange at first sight that
Sterne should have made out of him Eugenius, the discreet
adviser of Yorick, for Hall-Stevenson was anything but
discreet. And yet he was a man of the world who knew how
to still a quarrel and keep his friends all good-natured
towards one another. In spite of his idleness, he carried
away from Cambridge a knowledge of the classics sufficient
to quote from them freely, and from his travels on the Con-
tinent was brought back an interest in French and Italian
literature. As in the case of Sterne, Locke's Essay on the
Human Understanding was a book never to be forgotten.

Except for trips to London and the northern watering-
places to meet friends, Hall-Stevenson shut himself up in
Crazy Castle, where an inactive life brought on rheumatism
and various disorders of the digestion, which were aggravated
rather than helped by a free use of current nostrums. Some
years of this treatment, attended with painful results, and
he developed into a humorous hypochondriac of the family
one may read of in Peregrine Pickle or Humphry Clinker.
It was his whim to lay all his ailments to the damps of

122 LAURENCE STEBNE

Yorkshire, especially to the cold and raw northeast wind,
which was with him a synonym for death. His sleeping
room, it is said, was in sight of the weather-cock — the cock
was an arrow — over the old clock-tower shown in his drawing
of the castle. On rising in the morning, the master looked
first toward the arrow to see what the weather was to be;
and if it pointed towards the northeast, he went back to bed,
drew the curtains, and imagined himself in extremis. Sterne,
who frequently bantered Hall- Stevenson on his nerves and
the. weather, in his letters as well as in Tristram Shandy and
the Sentimental Journey, attempted a cure while on a visit
to Crazy Castle. On a night, says the tale, he climbed the
clock-tower, or engaged a boy to do so, and tied down the
weather-cock in a westerly direction. After that all went
well for some days until the cord broke and the arrow shot
round to the northeast. Hall-Stevenson then took to his bed
and Sterne went home.

The master of Skelton formed his merry Yorkshire friends
into a convivial club, called the Demoniacs, in imitation of
the Rabelaisian Monks of Medmenham Abbey, who were then
creating great scandal in southern England. Medmenham
Abbey was an ancient Cistercian monastery, beautifully
situated, "by hanging woods and soft meadows", on the
Thames, between Great Marlow and Henley. In this retired
place, where once dwelt the old monks, a new and profane
order was established by Sir Francis Dashwood, afterwards
Baron Le Despenser, Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, etc., — a man seldom sober.
"With him were associated John Wilkes the politician, Paul
"Whitehead the poet, Sir "William Stanhope, Lord Melcombe
Regis, the Earl of Sandwich, and "other hands of the first
water" up to twelve — the number of the Apostles. They
called themselves Franciscans after their founder. Paul
Whitehead, their secretary and steward, was known as St.
Paul. Besides the first twelve, there was a lower order of
twelve, who acted as servants to their superiors. Over the
grand entrance was written for all who entered, Fay ce que
vouldras, which was also the famous inscription on Rabelais 's
Abbey of Theleme. Every summer and at other favourable

PASTIMES AND FRIENDSHIPS 123

times, the Monks retired to their abbey for the worship of
Satan and the Paphian Aphrodite in parody of the rites of
the Church of Kome. On one occasion, it was a current
story, when they were in the height of their mirth, invoking
his Satanic majesty to come among them in person, Wilkes
let loose a baboon decked in the conventional insignia of the
devil. The consternation that followed, says the chronicler,
was simply indescribable. The revellers were terrified nearly
out of their senses, for they thought that the devil had really
heeded their summons. The baboon, as frightened as they,
leaped upon the shoulders of Lord Sandwich, who was cele-
brating the messe noire; whereupon the wicked nobleman fell
upon his face, imploring first the devil and then heaven to
have mercy upon his miserable soul. Soon after this incident,
which could not be kept secret, the society was disbanded.*

The direct connection between this abandoned brotherhood
and the Demoniacs who gathered under the roof of Crazy
Castle is undeniable. Hall-Stevenson and Sterne afterwards
numbered Wilkes, Dashwood, and other of the Monks among
their intimate London friends. Hall-Stevenson may have
visited Medmenham, and Dashwood, with little doubt, some-
times came down to Skelton, where he was known as "the
Privy Counsellor". Sterne when away addressed the com-
pany at Skelton as "the household of faith" and sent them,
in parody of the words of St. Paul, the apostolic benediction.
In justice, however, to the Demoniacs, it must be said at once
that they could have been only a faint reflection of the Monks
of Medmenham. They were a company of noisy Yorkshire
squires and parsons who assembled at Skelton for out-of-door
sports during the day and for drinking and jesting through
the night. To quote their host:

"Some fell to fiddling, some to fluting,
Some to shooting, some to fishing
Others to pishing and disputing."

* For Medmenham Abbey, see Charles Johnstone, Chrysal, or the
History of a Guinea, vol. Ill, bk. II, chs. XVII-XXrV (London, 1760-
65) ; Letters to and from Mr. Wilkes, I, 34-50 (London, 1769) ; and
G. Lipscomb, History of Buckinghamshire, III, 615-16 (London, 1847).

124 LAUBENCE STERNE

As at Medmenham, every one was expected to follow his
own inclinations, doing whatsoever he pleased. "Why should
a man", to paraphrase Eabelais, the originator of the idea,
"bring his life into subjection to rules and the hours? Why
should he not give full rein to will and instinct ? — eat, drink,
sleep, or perhaps labour, because nature draws him that way
and not because custom calls or the bell rings?" Among
the Demoniacs, Hall-Stevenson was known as Antony, prob-
ably because he was at the same time a recluse, and yet in the
prime essential wholly unlike the saint whose name he bore.
Disliking field sports, he kept much within doors. But when
Sterne came over, squire and parson made excursions together

to Guisborough for sentimental visits with "Mrs. C

Miss C , &c " ; or they drove over to Saltburn, where they

amused themselves on an afternoon by racing chariots along
the sandy beach, "with one wheel in the sea". Of all
pastimes that took Sterne out of doors, none pleased him
quite so much as this; and none could be more exhilarating.
Over sands hard and firm enough for the modern automobile,
the two Crazyites might run their horses for five miles to the
north, even to Redcar, and then turn about for the exciting
course homewards through the fresh spray of the ocean.

The fisherman of the group was the Rev. Robert Lascelles,
formerly of Durham. Graduating from Lincoln College,
Oxford, in 1739, he joined Hall-Stevenson's "flying squad-
ron" against the Jacobite raiders, and subsequently obtained
the vicarage of Gilling, by Richmond in the West Riding.
Late in life he published a volume of merry verses on angling,
shooting, and coursing. This man of the cloth, whose fellow-
ship Sterne especially enjoyed for his jesting, was nicknamed
Panty, cut short for familiar speech from Pantagruel, the
hero of Rabelais 's romance. We read, too, of Andrew Irvine,
a Cambridge doctor of theology, and master of the grammar
school at Kirkleatham, a short distance away. Because of his
resemblance to an Irishman, he was renamed Paddy Andrew.

Among other Demoniacs, not so easily identified, were the
men whom Sterne affectionately addressed as "My dear
Garland, Gilbert, and Cardinal Scroope". The first of the
three was Nathaniel Garland, a country gentleman; and the

PASTIMES AND FRIENDSHIPS 125

last was likely a Yorkshire parson. An architect appears,
too, under the Spanish disguise of Don Pringello, who was
called over to rebuild Crazy Castle; but so great was his
admiration for "the venerable remains", that he could only
be prevailed upon "to add a few ornaments suitable to the
stile and taste of the age it was built in". Could these men
be uncovered they might prove as interesting as "Zachary",
that is, Zachary Moore, whose name found its way into local
history. He was the spendthrift of the company. Inherit-
ing a rich and extensive manor at Lofthouse, some ten miles
south of Skelton, he entered upon a career of riot and
prodigality. "There is a tradition", says the historian of
the district,* "that during his travels on the Continent his
horses' shoes were made of silver; and so careless was he of
money, that he would not turn his horses' head if they got
loose or fell off, but replaced them with new ones". Among
his strange caprices, apparently discordant with his character,
was that of building a school at Lofthouse for the instruction
of children in the Scriptures, the catechism, and the prayer-
book. After thirty years of dissipation, he completed "the
laborious work of getting to the far end of a great fortune";
and was then deserted "by the gay butterflies who had
sported about him in his summer hour". By the aid of his
London friends, among whom were men of "royal and
ducal rank", he obtained an ensigncy in the British army and
soon afterwards died at Gibraltar. Hall-Stevenson lamented
his absence from Skelton in an ode beginning

"What sober heads hast thou made ake?
How many hast thou kept from nodding?
How many wise-ones, for thy sake,
Have flown to thee, and left off plodding?"

Two colonels were sometimes with the company. One was
"Colonel Hall" — George Lawson Hall, a brother of the
master of Skelton, who married a daughter of Lord "William
Manners, and entered the army. The other colonel was
Charles Lee, at the time an officer on half pay. He fought

* Ord, History and, Antiquities of Cleveland, 275-78.

126 LAUEENCE STERNE

in America throughout the French and Indian War, and
settling afterwards in Virginia and obtaining a major-gen-
eralship in the Continental army, he sought to wrest the
supreme command from Washington. "Savage Lee", as
people called him, was already a quarrelsome companion,
whom Hall-Stevenson found hard to manage. More remotely
connected with the Demoniacs was William Hewitt — "old
Hewitt" — "a very sensible old gentleman but a very great
humourist", who lived much abroad. Smollett, who met him
at Scarborough and in Italy, told the story of his curious
ending. Being attacked by a painful malady while at
Florence in 1767, Hewitt resolved to take himself off, like
Atticus, by starvation. "He saw company", says Smollett
in a note to Humphry Clinker, "to the last, cracked his jokes,
conversed freely, and entertained his guests with music.
On the third day of his fast, he found himself entirely freed
of his complaint, but refused taking sustenance. He said,
the most disagreeable part of the voyage was past, and he
should be a cursed fool indeed to put about ship when he was
just entering the harbour." Persisting in this resolution, he
soon finished his course.

The group of strange humourists that gyrated round Hall-
Stevenson changed of course from year to year. One would
fall out and another would be found to take his place. But
Paddy and Panty, who lived near by, might be counted upon
at all times; and Sterne never missed, if he could help it,
the great conclave of demons that assembled in October.
"A jollier set", says the host, "never met, either before or
since the flood." At night there were "joyous deliriums
over the burgundy", when each contributed his share to the
amusement and the jesting. Sterne was the fiddler. His
love for the violin and cello and music in general, comes out
again and again in Tristram Shandy and elsewhere. The
speech and movements of his characters, would one but observe
it, are all deftly attuned to musical harmony. What, for
example, would my uncle Toby be, as he lays his persuasive
hand upon your heart, without "that soft and irresistible
piano of voice, which the nature of the argumentum ad
hominem absolutely requires"? It was a shepherd's pipe

A

PASTIMES AND EEIENDSHIPS 127

that gave the exquisite tone to the scene with Maria by

the roadside in Bourbonnais: "Adieu, Maria: adieu, poor

hapless damsel! some time, but not now, I may hear

thy sorrows from thy own lips but I was deceived; for

that moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of
woe with it, that I rose up, and with broken and irregular
steps walk'd softly to my chaise." Yorick, it will be remem-
bered from Tristram Shandy, quaintly characterised his
sermons, as he marked and tied them up for future use, by
an appropriate musical term. Most of them had moderate
written across their backs, but here and there is an adagio, a
con strepito, or con I'arco, or senza Varco, etc. These are
but examples. If they carry us a little away from Skelton,
we certainly are brought back to an evening at the castle in
that passage where Sterne tunes his Cremona and snaps a
string :

"Ptr . . r . . r . . ing twing — twang — prut — trut — 'tis a
cursed bad fiddle. — Do you know whether my fiddle 's in tune
or no? — trut . . prut . . — They should be fifths. — 'Tis wickedly
strung — tr ...a.e.i.o.u . — twang. — The bridge is a mile
too high, and the sound post absolutely down, — else — trut . .

prut hark! 'tis not so bad a tone. — Diddle diddle, diddle

diddle, diddle diddle, dum. * * * Twaddle diddle, tweddle

diddle, — twiddle diddle, twoddle diddle, — twuddle diddle,

— prut trut — krish — krash — krush."

The jesting, hints here and there suggest, was racy and
salacious, as one should expect from avowed Pantagruelists.
There were running plays upon words, especially Latin
words, for the facetious quibbles in fashion with Rabelais and
the learned humourists of the Renaissance — varied by the
retelling of old tales from collections in the French and
Italian tongues. For their correspondence Sterne and Hall-
Stevenson devised a Latin of their own after the style of
the famous Epistolae Obscurorum Yirorum. The only one
of these letters between Antony and Laurentius now extant
was written by Sterne in the midst of noisy companions at a
York coffee-house, and sent over to Skelton on the eve of his
setting out for London. As a Demoniac, Sterne defined for
his friend in this letter the nature of the evil spirit that wa3

128 LAUKENCE STERNE

driving him from home to the gaiety of the metropolis:
"Diabolus iste qui me intravit, non est diabolus vanus, at
consobrinus suus Lucifer — sed est diabolus amabundus, qui
non vult sinere me esse solum * * * el tu es possessus cum
eodem malo spiritu qui te tenet in deserto esse tentatum
ancillis tuis, et perturbatum uxore tua." If we had a sure
key to the book, we should doubtless find that of the large
body of jests and stories in Tristram Shandy, a large num-
ber had once been heard at Skelton. As if it were so, many
are the glimpses of Torick and Eugenius in conversation by
the fireside and out in the fields. Especially graphic is the
scene where Torick, while telling a tawdry story "of a nun
who fancied herself a shell-fish", is interrupted by his friend,
who rises, walks around the table, and takes him by the hand.
Then there is that smart repartee in parody of Alexander's
reply to Parmenio, as given by Longinus On the Sublime:

"If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water,
Eugenius — And, if I was you, Torick, replied Eugenius, so
would I."

Sterne's jests, commonly good-natured, could be at times
sharp and bitter, for he went into wit-combats with the inten-
tion of winning, though he might come out of them, he says,
"like a fool". On one occasion his host and Panty took him
to task for his brutal treatment of a coxcomb, like "the
puppy" at the George Inn, who had pushed his way into
their society. "The man", said Sterne in memory of it, "lost
temper with me for no reason upon earth but that I could
not fall down and worship a brazen image of learning and
eloquence, which he set up, to the persecution of all true
believers — I sat down upon his altar, and whistled in the time

of his divine service and broke down his carved work, and

kicked his incense pot to the D , so he retreated, sed non

sine felle in corde suo".

From this jesting and story-telling, Hall-Stevenson took
the hint for his Crazy Tales, in which eleven of the Demoniacs
relate gay intrigues "to promote good humour and cheerful-
ness" through a night at Skelton. Panty 's tale of "The
Cavalier Nun" was developed from an old monkish distich,
which, slightly varied, Sterne long afterwards employed again

PASTIMES AND FEIENDSHIPS 129

to give point to An Impromptu, run off "in a few moments
without stopping his pen", while the author was "thoroughly-
soused". Zachary chose his theme from Bandello, drawing
a parallel between the Italian bishop and Sterne. The
Privy-Counsellor presented an imitation of Chaucer. Antony
adjusted an old tale to the boarding-school; and Sterne,
beginning with the great walnut tree and other reminiscences
of Cambridge, wandered off into a cock-and-bull story, such
as fitted his character, though not one of the best of its kind.
Like these Chaucerian tales of Hall-Stevenson's, Tristram
Shandy, it is almost needless to add in conclusion, also had
its living counterpart in Crazy Castle, but after a larger and
different manner. Not that Sterne, so far as we can divine
him, exactly transferred to his book living portraits of the
men whom he met over the rich burgundy. But it was under
the hospitable roof of Skelton that he associated, in jest, argu-
ment, and dispute, with those half -mad oddities of human
nature which he knew how to transform, by the aid of other
memories, into Eugenius, Mr. Walter Shandy, and my uncle
Toby.

CHAPTER VI

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBRARY

Good fellowship over bright burgundy was doubtless quite
sufficient for drawing Sterne to Skelton for a week or two
in October and oftener. But there was another attraction
for him in the library of old books that had been long col-
lecting by his host and the family before him. Indeed,
writers on Sterne, repeating what was said a century ago,
have given wide currency to the tradition that the humourist
found and read at Skelton most of those strange volumes that
go to the learning and adornment of Tristram Shandy.
Though the tradition is far from the truth, Sterne's intimacy
with Hall-Stevenson may have led him to reading curious
books for one of his recreations in the long and obscure years
at Sutton. We may fancy him on his visits to Skelton poring
over his friend's big folios and taking three or four of them
with him as he drove home. Nearer at hand was the library
of his dean and chapter, rich in manuscripts, and old treatises
on law, medicine, and divinity, wherein he could have met
with his humorous instances of casuistry and misplaced
learning.

But the books that became a part of Sterne's mental
equipment must have been his daily companions at Sutton.
When he emerges from obscurity, he appears at once as a
book collector on his own account. If the first money from
the sale of Tristram Shandy went to the purchase of a car-
riage and a pair of horses, the surplus from the second
instalment was left with a bookseller for seven hundred books
which were "set up in my best room". Before his fame
and the competency that came with it, Sterne's purchases
must have been more restricted, but even then his income was
not so small as to leave nothing for his humour. In the
eighteenth century, York was the centre of the northern

130

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBRARY 131

book trade. From the surrounding district, libraries of coun-
try gentlemen were sent in to Caesar Ward, John Todd, and
other dealers to be disposed of at auction or private sale.
Auctions were also held every few weeks at inns and town-
halls in the neighbourhood. For a few shillings Sterne could
have procured beautiful folios that would now bring a
handful of guineas, if they could be had at all. To Sterne's
reading in this formative period, we have a trustworthy,
though incomplete, index in Tristram Shandy. He there
reflects of course himself and Hall-Stevenson in the opposite
tastes of the two Shandys, both of whom are collectors, one
making a specialty of military architecture and the other of
the learned humourists. Among the facetiae that Mr. Walter
Shandy most prized, were Bouchet's Serees, and Bruscam-
bille's Pensees Facetieuses, including a prologue upon long
noses, which was bought of a London dealer for three half-
crowns. The story of the purchase at the book-stall Sterne
related with the passion of the bibliophile: "There are not
three Bruscambille's in Christendom — said the stall-man,
except what are chain 'd up in the libraries of the curious.

My father flung down the money as quick as lightning took

Bruscambille into his bosom hied home from Piccadilly to

Coleman-street with a treasure, without taking his hand once
off from Bruscambille all the. way. ' ' When in a confidential
mood one day on a visit to Stillington Hall, Sterne told his
friends there, as John Croft remembered it, what books he
read and studied most. "He placed first the Moyen de Par-
venir of Beroalde de Verville, and added Montaigne, Kabelais,
Marivaux, and Dr. Joseph Hall, "Bishop of Exeter in King
James the First's reign". But he forgot, as was Sterne's
way, to mention many an author that ought to have been
on the list. His fireside books were as odd as the men with
whom he associated at Crazy Castle. From them he drew
and then cast them aside, in just the same way as he would
take up his pencil for a caricature of his wife, or his gun for
an afternoon with the partridges.

First in the catalogue of books read by the Vicar of Sutton
were three of the world's greatest humourists — Lucian, "my;
dear Kabelais, and dearer Cervantes". With Lucian, byj

132 LAUBENCE STEENE

whose ashes he swore the "oath referential", Sterne was less
familiar than with the other two ; hut we must suppose that
the Dialogues, read at Cambridge, were taken up again in the
Sutton period, for he could, when in the mood for it, fall into
Lueian's tone of gay mockery. The presence of Cervantes,
whom he knew through Skelton's translation of Don Quixote,
is felt in one place or another of every volume of Tristram
Shandy, from the introductory sketches of Yorick and Dr.
Slop on to the end, through scores of passages pervaded by
this "gentle Spirit of sweetest humour". Eabelais, though
Sterne sometimes ranked him after Cervantes, was really, I
should say, first in his affections. A volume of Gargantua
or of Pantagruel, Yorick was accustomed to carry in "his
right-hand coat pocket", that it might be ready for the amuse-
ment of his friends, as they drew up to the fire after supper.
On these occasions Yorick read to them, not from the original
French — for Sterne had little acquaintance with that, though
he could pick it out by the help of Cotgrave's dictionary, —
but from the current version of Ozell, a London scribbler,
who spent his days in mutilating foreign classics for English
readers. Ozell, text, notes, and all, Sterne had well-nigh by
heart, and found them most serviceable in the act of com-
position. Without Eabelais, his jests, whims, anecdotes, and
splendid extravagances, there would never have been a
Sterne as we now know him.*

Rabelais, the most constant of his passions, drew Sterne
on into the facetious tales and verses of the later Panta-
gruelists, both French and English, among whom he also
luxuriated. The Guillaume Bouchet who delighted the heart
of Mr. Walter Shandy, was a magistrate at Poitiers, where his
Series, or Evening Conferences, three volumes in the whole,
began to appear in 1584. In this vivacious work, Bouchet
and his friends meet at one another's house on appointed
evenings for a light supper and to relate incidents that they
have read of in books or heard of among their neighbours.

* Sterne's immense obligations to Ozell 's translation of Eabelais are
indicated in the marginal notes to the Grenville copy of Tristram Shandy
m the British Museum. For the humourist's borrowings from Eabelais
and other French writers, see also John Eerriar, Illustrations of Sterne,
two vols, (second edition, London, 1812).

THE PAESON IN HIS LIBEAEY 133

Some one of them usually tells the main story, while the
others break in with their contributions to the theme, be it of
wine, water, or women, the fine arts, physicians, lawyers, or
the clergy. The volumes of Bouchet are an epitome of the
Gallic wit that lies scattered in the old fabliaux and in-
numerable contes, the aim of which is mirth and laughter.

Of books of this kind Sterne rightly gave his preference to
the Moyen de Parvenir or How to Succeed, which made its
appearance in 1610, without the author's name. It was
written, the critics have established, by Beroalde de Verville,
a canon of the Cathedral of Tours, otherwise known for
several imitations of Rabelais. As in Bouchet, the plan is a
symposium, where gather for conversation and story-telling
Beroalde 's friends under the names of famous men and
women of antiquity, such as Csesar, Socrates, and Sappho.
Laughter, eating, drinking, and sleeping are proclaimed the
four cardinal virtues. The conversations- run from theme to
theme without any apparent connection at first sight; but
they are really all ordered with great skill, the last word of
each discourse giving occasion for the one following. Next
to Rabelais 's profusion of wit, no other book has quite so many
analogies with Tristram Shandy.

Bruscambille, another favourite with Sterne, was the nom
de theatre of a comedian named Deslauriers, whose Fantasies
or Pensees Facetieuses appeared in 1612. The author
imagines himself on the stage addressing his audience in
whimsical prologues, harangues, and paradoxes on cuekoldry,
pedantry, long and short noses, or in defence of lying or of
telling the truth, as whim may seize him. Bruscambille was
a perfect master of what the French call galimatias, a mad
flow of speech in which incongruity is piled upon incongruity
for comic effect. "I met", says Bruscambille, to give an
extreme example of his nonsense, "I met, gentlemen and
ladies, last night a large, small man with red hair who had
a beard as black as pepper ; he had just come from a country
where, except for the animals and the people, there was no
living soul." How well Sterne learned the art of Bruscam-
bille, everyone knows who has perused his books or letters,
though, it should be observed, he never went quite so far as

134

LAURENCE STEKNE

his original in a reckless topsy-turvy of ideas and phrases.
Perhaps he went the farthest when he wrote "A cow broke
in (to-morrow morning] to my uncle Toby's fortifications
and eat up two rations and a half of dried grass, tearing up
the sod with it, which faced his horn-work and covered way."
Beroalde, Bouchet, and Bruscambille were all in the
vicar's library when it was sold after his death. With them
Sterne classed Montaigne, who, though his work is of more
serious import, wandered on whimsically, as everybody would
have him, from one topic to another, so that the title of any
one of his essays gives no clue to the content. Sterne knew
his Montaigne well, not in the French but in the fine transla-
tion made by Cotton, the accomplished angler; and loved him
with the affection of Thackeray, who took him, instead of an
opiate, as a bedside book to prattle him to sleep when threat-
ened by insomnia.* Nor should we forget Searron's comic
muse with skirts all bedrabbled, nor the tearful mistress of
Marivaux and other French novelists with whom Sterne
carried on frequent flirtations. Last in the line (barring the
sentimental Marivaux) were the English humourists — Swift
and his group — who sought to fill the easy chair left vacant
by Eabelais and his French descendants. To Sterne, Swift
meant mainly the Tale of a Tub, a cock-and-bull story, with
digressions upon criticism and madness, digressions upon
digressions, and further digressions, which, says the author,
serve a book in the way foreign troops serve a state, for they
"either subdue the natives or drive them into the most un-
fruitful corners". Near Swift's Tub, doubtless lay, in
Sterne's estimation, Dr. John Arbuthnot's Memoirs of Martin
Scriblerus, long ago pointed out as having some resemblance
to Tristram Shandy, in its humorous dissertations on science
and mathematics, education, playthings, and the breeching

* When Tristram Shandy first appeared, an English gentleman resid-
ing at Geneva wrote out a fanciful sketch of the author as he imagined
him from the book, and sent it on to Hall-Stevenson. Amused as well as
flattered by the letter, Sterne replied, saying with reference to a con-
jecture that he was a reader of Montaigne: " 'For my conning Mon-
taigne as much as my prayer book' — there you are right again, — but
mark a second time, I have not said I admire him as much; — tho' had
he been alive, I would certainly have gone twice as far [as you say] to
have smoaked a pipe with him, as with Arch-Bishop Laud or his Chap-
lains (the' one of 'em was my grandfather)." — Morgan Manuscripts.

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBRARY 135

of children. The genius of Pope, who bore a hand in the
miscellanies of Scriblerus, Sterne took for granted, like the
rest of his generation, easily quoting his proverbial lines.
The friendship between the poet and his physician, as depicted
in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot — the one a satirist and man
of letters pestered by friends and foes alike, and the other a
faithful counsellor crying "Hold! for God's sake you'll
offend" — struck Sterne's fancy especially, for he carried the
situation over into Tristram Shandy for his Yorick and
Eugenius. Finally, he never doubted the truth of Pope's
doctrine of ruling passions, in accordance with which were
constructed all of his own characters.

Sterne also dipped into the scribbling undercurrent of
the Queen Anne wits for occasional refreshment. There he
discovered Tom Brown "of facetious memory", one of whose
anecdotes was turned to a new purpose in the opening para-
graph of Tristram Shandy; and there he caught sight of two
books as mad as any he himself was destined to write. One
of them was An Essay towards the Theory of the Intelligible
World, from the pen of "Gabriel John", the pseudonym, per-
haps, of Tom D'Urfey, the profane wit and dramatist. It
appeared, according to the humorous title-page, "in the
Year One thousand Seven Hundred &c", and was to consist
"of a Preface, a Postscript and a Little something between".
On one page this "little something between" was reduced to
a series of dashes in place of the usual text, with an explana-
tory note at the left saying, to quote half of it : " The Author
very well understands that a good sizable Hiatus discovers a
very great Genius, there being no Wit in the World more
Ideal, and consequently more refined, than what is display 'd
in these elaborate Pages, that have ne're a syllable written
on them." The other mad book, the work of John Dunton,
a London bookseller and adventurer, bears the title of A
Voyage Bound the World, * * * containing the Bare Adven-
tures of Bon Eainophilus (1691). To attract the reader,
Dunton employed every sort of type, including whole pages
of capitals and black letter, sprinkled with dashes and index-
hands. He began his tale with the prenatal history of his
hero, and then ran off into a series of cock-rambles which end

136 LAUEENCB STEBNE

nowhere, in order that "people shou'd miss what they
expected and find what they never lookt for". When Sterne
was charged with plagiarising from Dunton, he wrote to a
friend to say that he once met with the book in a London
circulating library and took from it "many of his ideas".
The very copy of Dunton that Sterne read now rests, it is
probable, in the Boston Public Library.*

Not the least charm for Sterne about the old humourists
which fell in his way was the quaint erudition that went hand
in hand with their frank foolery. After the fashion of the
Kenaissance, they took all knowledge for their province.
Rabelais was a learned physician and Benedictine. Bouchet
could not discourse on the virtues of wine without giving
first a history of the symposium from the Greeks down
through the arnica convivia of the Romans to the drinking
clubs of his own day, embellished throughout with numerous
quotations from the ancient poets and historians. Beroalde
passed in review the arts and sciences of the time, ridiculing
in his progress mathematics, metaphysics, casuistry, and cur-
rent literature; and setting up the claim that the Moyen de
Parvenir was "the centre of all books", wherein one might
find clearly demonstrated "the reason for all things that have
been or ever shall be". Even Dunton 's absurd book bore as
sub-title A Pocket Library; and Arbuthnot — to pass by the bet-
ter known Swift — ran through, in burlesque, all the arts and
sciences, back to their origin among the monkeys of India
and Ethiopia, who were our first philosophers. Erudition
like this, real or pretended, Sterne greatly enjoyed. It is
sometimes said that our classics, ancient and modern, are
over edited ; that the author is submerged in the annotations.

* Thia copy was owned by the late James Crossley, an English anti-
quarian, and after the dispersion of his library in 1885, it found its
way into the Boston Public Library (February, 1886). On a fly-leaf,
Crossley wrote: "Eodd [Thomas Rodd, the London book-seller] once
showed me an original Letter of Sterne in which he mentions this Work,
from which he took many of his Ideas and which he had met with in a
London Circulating Library. As the present Copy came from Hook-
ham 's, whose Bookplate, which was on the original boards, I have pasted
opposite, there is little doubt that this was the identical copy read by
Sterne." As Hookham's Library was at 15 Old Bond Street, near
Sterne's London lodgings, there is good ground for the conjecture with
which Crossley closes his valuable note.

THE PAESON IN HIS LIBEAEY 137

Sterne, on the other hand, never finding any fault with learn-
ing of this kind, disregarded, as we all well might, the author
and bent his mind upon understanding the editor. A good
instance of this is his apparent perusal of Hudibras, with
"large annotations" by the Rev. Zachary Grey, a Cambridge
man, among the multitude of which he may have found all
that had ever been said about the homunculus. A better
instance is his use of Philostratus concerning the Life of
Apollonius Tyaneus, with * * * Notes upon Each Chapter,
by Charles Blount, the deist. One may imagine Sterne's
delight as his eye fell upon Blount's preface to the reader:
"Whether kind or unkind, I shall call you neither, for fear
lest I be mistaken. * * * As for my Illustrations: Notwith-
standing they have some coherence with my Text, yet I
likewise design 'd them as Philological Essays upon several
Subjects, such as the least hint might present me with".
True to his promise, Blount made the old spiritual romance
of Philostratus merely the occasion for learned essays, far
exceeding in extent the original Greek, on dress, whiskers,
swearing, death, et cetera, themes which Sterne did not for-
get, as every reader of him knows, when he came to write
Tristram Shandy.

Sterne spent some time on Erasmus — on the Colloquia and
especially on the Mwpuw ey/cm/*""', which had been done into
English under the title of Morice Encomium; or a Panegyrick
upon Folly. Erasmus, like Sterne after him, assumed the
character of a jester, "playing at pushpin", or "riding
astride on a hobby-horse", in his journey through a censure
of men and morals. The Encomium was adorned ' ' with above
fifty curious cuts" by Holbein, of which two would attract
Sterne above all others — one representing a fierce wrangle of
disputants, and another depicting the instigation of the devil
by means of grotesque imps hovering over the head and
clawing the hair of their unfortunate victim. From Eras-
mus, Sterne passed on to the casuists and schoolmen, where
he was amused by discourses on the space occupied by souls,
the size of hell, debates on "the point of Martin Luther's
damnation", "the pudder and racket in Councils about owi
and vwoaraffK, — and in the Schools of the learned about

138 LAURENCE STERNE

power and about spirit, — about essences, and about quint-
essences,— about substances, and about space". In the course
of this reading, he fell in with the ars magna of Raymond
Lully; the terrible anathemas of Ernulf, Bishop of Roches-
ter in the eleventh century; the De Legibus Hebrmorum
RituaMbus of Dr. John Spencer, Master of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, wherein he stopped on the learned
reasons for and against circumcision; and Sir Robert Brook's
Graunde Abridgement, with other works in ecclesiastical law,
which tried to explain to him that in certain nice cases, as in
that of the Duchess of Suffolk, "the mother is not of kin
to her child".

Beyond doubt Sterne saw the Utrius Cosmi, Maioris
scilicet et Minoris Metaphysica, Physica atque Technica His-
toria by Robert Plud, a Fellow of the College of Physicians at
Oxford, and the first of the English Rosicrucians. The old
folio had two dedications, one to the Almighty and the other
to James the First. In the first chapter, Flud described, after
Trismegistus and Moses, chaos — or the ens primordiale
infinitum, informe, as his Latin has it, — under the form of a
very black smoke or vapour; and for the assistance of the
reader's imagination, he covered two thirds of a page with a
black square, writing on each of its four sides Et sic infini-
tum, lest somebody might suppose that there were boundaries
to the horrible shadow of undigested matter out of which the
Almighty created his universe of worlds and stars. This
square became of course Sterne's page dressed in mourning
for the death of "poor Yorick". Bacon's essays, we may be
sure, were in Sterne's library, for he quoted from them and
modified their phrasing with the greatest ease. He also
possessed a copy of Baconiana, or Genuine Remains of Francis
Bacon, a collection of posthumous miscellanies, which had been
brought out anonymously by Thomas Tenison, Archbishop
of Canterbury. One of the strange features of this book was
the archbishop's "Discourse by way of Introduction", added
as a tag at the end of the volume. Sterne was reading the
misplaced introduction when he began Tristram Shandy, for
he "conveyed" a passage from it to his twelfth chapter, and
not unlikely derived from the archbishop the notion of insert-

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBRARY 139

ing his prefaces and dedications midway in his own book.
If an introduction may be put after the word finis, when all
is supposed to be over, why, Sterne would argue, may it not
be slipped in anywhere.

The scholar that most fascinated Sterne was Robert Bur-
ton, the Oxford recluse who wrote The Anatomy of Melan-
choly, "the only book", said Boswell of Dr. Johnson, "that
ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to
rise". Once under the spell of the Anatomy, there is no
release for any man, whether he be of the staid character of
Johnson or of theshifting temper of Sterne. "I have lived",
wrote its author, to compress an autobiographic passage, "a
silent, sedentary, solitary, private life in the university,
penned up most part in my study. Though by my profession
a Divine, yet out of a running wit, an unconstant, unsettled
mind, I had a great desire to have some smattering in all
learning, to be aliquis in omnibus, nullus in singulis, to roam
abroad, to have an oar in every man's boat, to taste of every
dish, sip of every cup". An earlier selfhood he discovered
in Democritus, the ancient Greek sage of Abdera, "a little
wearish old man, very melancholy by nature", who passed
his time in his garden, writing under a shady bower, or cut-
ting up divers creatures "to find out the seat of this atra
bills, or melancholy, whence it; proceeds, and how it is engen-
dered in men 's bodies ; * * * saving that he sometimes would
walk down to the haven and laugh heartily at such variety of
ridiculous objects, which there he saw". Since the treatise
of the Greek philosopher, if ever written, was no longer in
existence, Burton took up the subject anew to the intent that
he might cure himself and the world of a dreadful malady.
"I writ of melancholy", he said, "by being busy to avoid
melancholy." Through "partitions, sections, members, and
subsections," entangled with medicine, law, morals, and
divinity, he cut out his theme, strewing his course with thou-
sands of quotations, ancient and modern, sometimes inserted
in the text, sometimes printed on the margin, neatly para-
phrased, or left untranslated, per accidens or as it might hap-
pen. The Anatomy of Melancholy, with its curious wit and
learning, was the most useful volume in Sterne's library.

140 LAURENCE STEENE

If Sterne wished a Latin phrase to point a sentence, if he
wished a good story, never stale if rightly retold, for an
episode in Tristram Shandy, he had but to open Burton, and
there it lay before him. Without scruple, he transferred to
his own pages long stretches of the old book, with only such
changes as genius can not help making when it takes from
others.

Besides the Anatomy, Sterne read all sorts of books on
physiology and medicine. His list of physicians, from whom
he could quote directly or indirectly, begins with Hippocrates
and comes down through Coglionissimo Borri, who "discov-
ered in the cellulse of the occipital parts of the cerebellum
* * * the principal seat of the reasonable soul", to Dr. James
Mackenzie, who argued for the great effects "which the pas-
sions and affections of the mind have upon the digestion".
An extraordinary source of amusement to Sterne were trea-
tises on midwifery, which was then just becoming a part of
the regular practice of physicians. In these books and pam-
phlets one physician ridiculed and scolded another, holding
up to contempt the instruments his opponent invented to
bring children safely into the world, and sometimes inter-
spersing his narrative with noisy disputes between the doctor
and the midwife who was being displaced by the new science.
Celebrated at the time was the angry altercation between
Dr. John Burton of York and Dr. William Smellie of Glas-
gow. Burton's books, now of great rarity, were worth own-
ing even in Sterne's day for their copperplates etched by
George Stubbs, the horse-painter. With local as well as dis-
tant controversies, Sterne thus kept pace simply for the
humour of it.

That Sterne should have also extracted humour out of
mechanics and military engineering is the whim of his genius
most akin to madness. True, memories of childhood carried
him back to life in Irish barracks, but it is doubtful if he had
ever seen a town fortified against a siege. His knowledge of
the siege of Namur, for example, which plays so large a part
in Tristram Shandy, was derived mostly from The Life of
William the Third, Late King of England, an anonymous
military biography that appeared the year after his Majesty's

THE PAESON IN HIS LIBRARY 141

death. It may have been Sterne or it may have been Hall-
Stevenson who purchased every book he came across on mili-
tary science; but it was Sterne who perused them. These
treatises on the art of war had an immense run in the century
before Sterne, when military engineers brought to the con-
struction of defences, and all that pertains thereto, the assist-
ance of the newer mathematics, like Napier's Logarithms and
Gunter's Sines and Tangents, which performed wonderful
feats merely by addition and subtraction, without the help of
multiplication and division. Just as with the old romances
of chivalry, one Amadis begat another in an endless prog-
eny down through Bsplandian, Florisando, and Palmerin;
so it was with the books on military engineering, which
in one language or another spread throughout western
Europe. Inasmuch as their elaborate calculations fill and
occupy the mind beyond all other studies, the author of the
Anatomy recommended them among the best antidotes against
melancholy.

The way in which Sterne entered upon their track, losing
himself soon in the mazes, is reflected, I dare say, in what is
said of my uncle Toby's reading in Tristram Shandy. Most
of the first year my uncle Toby pored over "Gobesius's mili-
tary architecture and pyroballogy, translated from the
Flemish" — presumably, Leonhard Gorecius's Descriptio Belli
Ivonice (1578), — that he might discourse learnedly on the
uses of artillery. After this close preliminary study, he was
able to read rapidly the next year ten or twelve other crabbed
authors, just as the schoolboy, after going through his first
book in Latin, is supposed to proceed easily with the rest.
To take them chronologically, first came Girolamo Cataneo,
whose Libro di Fortificare, Offendere e Diffendere (1564)
contains "brief tables to know readily how many ranks of
footmen etc. go to making a just battle ' ' ; Agostino Ramelli,
with Le Diverse ed Artificiose Machine (1588), descriptive of
various contrivances for lifting heavy loads, constructing
bridges, and hurling ignited grenades and other artificial
fires; and the Florentine Lorini, who published a book on
fortifications in 1609, and served with honour under the kings
of France and Spain. So much for Italy. Then followed

142 LAURENCE STERNE

Marolois, whose Fortification ou Architecture Militaire
(1615) told Sterne how to attack and how to defend, with
many mathematical details and more than a hundred plates,
including one of Ostend prepared to endure the most pro-
tracted siege; the Nouvelle Maniere de Fortification (1618)
hy means of sluices, written by Stevinus, a distinguished
Dutch mathematician and engineer of the dykes, within whose
book Yorick's sermon on conscience long lay concealed; Les
Fortifications (1629) of the Chevalier de Ville, who attacked
Artois under the eyes of Louis the Thirteenth, and was the
first, it is said, to write upon the construction and effects of
mines; the Traite des Fortifications (1645) by the Comte de
Pagan, who conducted the sieges of Caen, Montauban, and
Nancy, losing an eye and finally his sight completely in the
service of his king; and Francois Blondel, who constructed
great public buildings, arches of triumph, and published
among other books L'Art de jetter les Bombes (1685). The
long list for the second year closes with the Nouvelle Maniere
de Fortifier les Places (1702) by Baron Van Coehorn, the
great Dutch engineer who fortified Namur — where my uncle
Toby received his grievous wound, — and gallantly defended
the citadel until, himself wounded and his regiment cut to
pieces, he was obliged to capitulate to his still greater rival,
Prestre de Vauban, afterwards Marshal of Prance. This was
the Vauban who designed new fortifications for most of the
cities of Prance and directed fifty sieges, winning town after
town in the Netherlands, with Louis the Fourteenth often
standing by, as at Namur, to witness the final blows that
compelled the surrender. The methods by which Vauban
built and by which he won, Sterne found explained in
De I'Attaque et de la Defense des Places (1737-42).

Notwithstanding his reading in all these books, Sterne — if
we may follow the hints from my uncle Toby— had not yet
learned much about projectiles. For this knowledge he went
to Tartaglia's Quesiti ed Invenzioni Diverse (1546), where he
was met with the demonstration that a cannon-ball does not
do its mischief by moving in a straight line. Having dis-
covered the road along which a cannon-ball can not go, he set
out to discover next the road in which it must go. His search

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBEAEY 143

began with the Pratique de la Guerre (1650) of Francois
Malthus, who gave precise directions for the use of artillery,
bombs, and mortars ; and the search ended with Galileo and
Torricelli, whose infallible laws of the parabola he could not
understand. There Sterne stopped, hopelessly bewildered.
In the strange journey he had consulted now and then the
Acta Eruditorum, a long and learned series of year-books in
Latin, containing the latest discussions and discoveries in
medicine, theology, and jurisprudence, as well as in mechanics
and military architecture.

From this array of books, no one should infer that Sterne
was a man of erudition. He probably could not follow a
demonstration in mechanics involving the higher mathematics.
It is, for example, noteworthy that he showed no interest in
Stevinus's solution of the problem of the inclined plane, the
achievement that gives the Dutch mathematician his place
in the history of mechanics. As if ignorant of the brilliant
discovery, Sterne referred to Stevinus as the inventor of
"a sailing chariot * * * of wonderful contrivance and velo-
city", belonging to Prince Maurice, for a sight of which "the
learned Peireskius * * * walked a matter of five-hundred
miles". The truth seems to be that, while designing Tristram
Shandy during the last years at Sutton, Sterne thumbed
many old quartos and folios, amusing himself with maps,
plates, and descriptions of sieges, to the end that my uncle
Toby might be proficient in the phrases of military science.
In that aim Sterne certainly succeeded; for he wrote, with
the ease of an expert, of scarp and counter-scarp, counter-
guard and demi-bastion, covered-way, glacis, ravelin and
half-moon, on through saps, mines, and palisadoes.

The books that have been enumerated by no means com-
prise all that Sterne read at Sutton. They are rather only
the curiosities ; but as such they are the most significant, for
they show wherein Sterne fed his humour. He continued to
quote from the ancient classics, which he had read at school
and college, as if they were still his companions. To describe
his impatient moods he cited Hotspur when "pestered with a
popinjay"; and the name which he bears in letters was taken
from the jester whom Hamlet once knew. He read Lord

144 LAURENCE STERNE

Rochester, Dryden, and others of the Restoration; and with
the wits of the next half century he was still more familiar.
Voltaire's Candide, Johnson's Basselas, and other notable
books he read as they came out, or saw them in the stalls of
York dealers. But it is unnecessary to proceed with these
miscellanies, since here is already, in Dryden 's phrase, God's
plenty. As a divine, Sterne knew well the religious literature
that was expected of him. It is a pleasure to discover in him
traces of Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici and of Jeremy
Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying. For forming his
style as a preacher he studied the sermons of Hall, Berkeley,
Young, Tillotson, and other moralists and divines, from whom
he drew liberally, sometimes merely paraphrasing the original
when the harvest season, it may be, gave him scant time for
independent composition. Nor should we forget the Scrip-
tures which he read and re-read during the long winter even-
ings at Sutton, with the result that his style became saturated
with the words and phrases of the English version. Many a
clergyman since his time has run through indexes and con-
cordances to the Bible in quest of "God tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb"; but the labour has been in vain, for the
sentence, possessing the beauty and melody of inspiration, is
Sterne's own recoinage of a crude proverb.

Along with his reading, Sterne played with his pen
occasionally as well as with his pencil and his gun. Between
the paragraph-writing for the newspapers and Tristram
Shandy, lay several whims in verse and prose, including a
satirical pamphlet which was duly printed at York. One of
these minor pieces — a very pretty fancy cast in the form of a
letter to a Mr. Cook, — after remaining in manuscript for more
than a century, was published in 1870 by Paul Stapfer in
his study of Sterne.* How the French critic came by it
we will leave to his own strange narrative:

"Two years ago, a friend of mine in England, an M.A. of
the University of Oxford and then Vice-Principal of Elizabeth
College in the island of Guernsey, was visiting a lady of his
acquaintance at York. Among other things the conversation
turned to autographs; whereupon the lady said she had an
* Laurence Sterne, sa Personne et ses Owvrages (Paris, 1870).

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBRARY 145

entire essay in the hand of Sterne, which had never been
published; and she showed it to him. M. ***** f after
examining it, said:

" 'I shall soon see a friend who is now at work on a study
of Sterne ; I am sure that he would be glad to have this piece ;
but I should not like to show it to him unless he may be per-
mitted to copy and publish it.' 'You shall have it,' replied
the lady.

"I received the manuscript, copied and returned it.
Some time afterwards I met the owner of it and naturally
asked her how a precious manuscript like this came into her
possession. The very vague information which she gave me in
the course of the conversation left only the most confused im-
pression on my mind. For this reason I intended later to
ask her to write a short note upon the history of these sheets :
but I learned that she was then so ill as to render impossible
all correspondence. I was thus compelled to forego any
exact knowledge of the matter, and even a second perusal of
the manuscript which she had offered to place at my disposal
again that I might make a facsimile of it."

"We have then", adds Stapfer in comment upon the
story, "no external proof of the authenticity of the fragment.
All we can say is that the hand, remarkably fair and firm, is
identical with what we have already seen of Sterne's; but
there is no signature."

It would be quite easy to set up an argument against
accepting as Sterne's this late discovery. Those who know
Sterne only from Tristram Shandy may say that it hardly
resembles anything in that book. Those who know Sterne a
little better may say that it is only one among the scores of
imitations and forgeries that followed in the wake of his
popularity. And to everybody the tale told by the lady of
York, so far as there is any, must seem a fabrication. But
other manuscripts, Sterne's beyond doubt, have drifted down
in the same obscure ways ; and the content of the one in ques-
tion is in perfect harmony with an allegorical phase of mind
through which Sterne was passing before he took up Tristram
Shandy. In this case the allegory ends with a moral reflec-
tion, playfully supported by a line from Pope's Essay on Man,

10

146 LAURENCE STERNE

occurring in the first epistle near the passage which Sterne
quoted in a letter to Miss Lumley, back in 1740. The spell-
ing and abbreviations, as printed by Stapfer, correspond with
Sterne 's peculiar usage ; an apt phrase recalls now and then
his fine sense for style ; and the background is Sutton without
much doubt.

The interesting trifle — only half worked out — is a dream
or meditation. The Vicar of Sutton had spent, I should say,
an evening in his library over Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la
Plurality des Mondes, in its day a famous book on the vast
number of new worlds discovered or made probable by
modern science. "A leaf on a tree growing in the garden",
said Fontenelle, "is a little world inhabited by innumerable
animalcules invisible to the naked eye, to whom it appears
as an immense expanse with mountains and ravines. Those
on one side have no intercourse with those who live on the
other, any more than we have with men at the antipodes.
Just so, it seems to me, the great planets moving through the
immensity of space may be likewise inhabited with beings."
The dwellers upon earth, moralised Sterne with reference to
this passage, have commonly regarded themselves as the
centre of the universe. "So considerable do they imagine
themselves as doubtless to hold that all these numerous stars
(our sun among the rest) were created with the only view
of twinkling upon such of them, as have occasion to follow
their cattle late at night." Whereas the truth seems to be
that "we are situate on a kind of isthmus, which separates
two Infinitys", one revealed by the telescope and the other
by the microscope. "On one side infinite Power and wisdom
appear drawn at full extent; on the other, in miniature.
The ' infinitely strong and bold strokes there, the infinitely
nice and delicate Touches here, shew equally in both the
divine hand."

His mind under the sway of these speculations, the vicar
laid aside his book, strolled out into his orchard, and stopped
near one of those plum trees which he had planted on first
coming to Sutton. It was a brilliant summer night without
a cloud. As he stood there, Fontenelle's myriad worlds were
all about him. Far above were the moon and the countless

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBEAEY 147

stars. By his side, on each green leaf of his plum trees were
nations performing "actions as truly great as any we read
of in the history of Alexander. Their courage, resolution,
and patience of Pain may be as great as that exhibited by the
Macedonian army, nay and even the prize of the contest no
way inferior to that which animated the brave Greeks. The
possession or conquest of the Leaf may gratify as many and
as strong desires in them, as that of the earth in us".

Time and space, Sterne further reflected, are but relative
notions depending upon the size and shape of the brain. To
the beings that people the universe comprised within his plum
tree, an hour or a minute may seem as long as four score and
ten years to us. On the tricks that time and place may play
with us, there came to Sterne's mind, "a very fine Specta-
tor",* wherein is related a story of Mahomet from the Koran.
"The angel Gabriel", according to Addison, "took Mahomet
out of his bed one morning to give him a sight of all things
in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the
prophet took a distinct view of ; and after having held ninety
thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his
bed. All this, says the Alcoran, was transacted in so small a
space of time, that Mahomet at his return found his bed still
warm, and took up an earthern pitcher, which was thrown
'down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel carried him
away, before the water was all spilt."

At this point in his reverie, Sterne returned to the rectory
and went to bed. "From that time", runs the narrative,
"I knew not what happen 'd to me, till by degrees I found
myself in a new state of being, without any remembrance or
suspicion that I had ever existed before, growing up grad-
ually to reason and manhood, as I had done here. The world
I was in was vast and commodious. The heavens were en-
lighten'd with abundance of smaller luminarys resembling
stars, and one glaring one resembling the moon ; but with this
difference that they seem'd fix'd in the heavens, and had no
apparent motion. There were also a set of Luminarys of a
different nature, that gave a dimmer light. They were of
various magnitudes, and appear 'd in different forms. Some
* No. 94.

148 LAURENCE STERNE

had the form of crescents; others, that shone opposite to the
great light, appear 'd round. We call'd them by a name,
which in our language would sound like second stars. Besides
these, there were several luminous streaks running across the
heavens like our milky way; and many variable glimmerings
like our north-lights." In his new world the dreamer passed
several ages and then seemed to return to earth, where he was
first rallied and then persecuted for his astronomical opinions.
In process of time "began to be heard all over the world a
huge noise and fragor in the skys, as if all nature was
approaching to her dissolution. The stars seem'd to be torn
from their orbits, and to wander at random thro' the heavens.
* * * * all was consternation, horrour, and amaze; no less
was expected than an universal wreck of nature. What ensu'd
I know not. All of a sudden, I knew not how, I found
myself in bed, as just waking from a sound sleep. * * * *
I hurri'd into the orchard, and by a sort of natural instinct
made to the plumb-tree under which pass'd my last night's
reverie. I observ'd the face of the heavens was just the same
as it had appear 'd to me immediately before I left my former
state ; and that a brisk gale of wind, which is common about
sun rising, was abroad. I recollected a hint I had read in
Fontenelle who intimates that there is reason to suppose that
the Blue on Plumbs is no other than an immense number of*
living creatures. I got into the tree, examin'd the clusters
of plumbs; found that they hung in the same position, and
made the same appearance with the constellations of second
stars, I had been so familiarly acquainted with, excepting
that some few were wanting, which I myself had seen fall.
I cou 'd then no longer doubt how the matter was. ' '

The world to which the dreamer had been transported by
the angel Gabriel for some thousands of years was, it would
seem, none other than the blue surface of a luscious plum
growing on his favourite tree. The luminaries that shone
about him like "second stars" were other plums dangling
above him. The "luminous streaks running across the
heavens like our milky way" were branches of the plum tree,
and "the many variable glimmerings like our north-lights"
were the leaves playing in the moonbeams. The damage to

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBSAEY 149

Sterne's solar system had been caused by a wind that here
and there sent a plum to the ground.

The dream is neatly rounded with a moral and a prophecy :

"O the vanity of worldly things, and even of worlds
themselves! 0 world, wherein I have spent so many happy
days! 0 the comforts, and enjoyments I am separated from;
the acquaintance and friends I have left behind me there!
0 the mountains, rivers, rocks and plains, which ages had
familiariz'd to my view! with you I seem'd at home; here I
am like a banish 'd man; every thing appears strange, wild
and savage! 0 the projects I had form'd! the designs I had
set on foot, the friendships I had cultivated! How has one
blast of wind dash'd you to pieces! . . . But thus it is:
Plumbs fall, and Planets shall perish

" 'And now a Bubble burst, and now a world.' The time
will come when the powers of heaven shall be shaken, and the
stars shall fall like the fruit of a tree, when it is shaken by a
mighty wind ! ' '

Akin to this fancy addressed to Mr. Cook is a meditation
in verse called The Unknown O, with the explanatory title
written beneath: "Verses occasion 'd by hearing a Pass-Bell",
that is, the knell for the death of some parishioner at Sutton
or some citizen of York. Sterne liked the poem so well that
he took it away with him to Coxwold, where it was carefully
guarded by his successors for a century; one of whom — the
Reverend George Scott — permitted Thomas Gill of Easing-
wold to print it in his Vallis Eboracensis (1852), a book on
the history and antiquities of the York valley. Spirited away
from Coxwold, the manuscript is now possessed by a member
of the Scott family. Though quite original in its details, the
poem bears some analogies to the Emperor Hadrian's famous
address to his departing soul as translated by Pope and after-
wards elaborated by the poet in "the Dying Christian to his
Soul". The abbreviations of the manuscript and the use of
y for th, reproduced here, are a little puzzling at first sight ;
and quaint obscurity is lent to the diction by astronomical
and other symbols which had come under Sterne's eye in
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and perhaps in one of

150 LAUKENCE STEBNE

Pope's minor satires. Taken in order, the symbols O, B, b,
and U stand for the world, God, heaven, and the soul :

Hark6 my gay Frd y* solemn Toll
Speaks ye departure of a soul ;

'Tis gone, Yts all we know not where

Or how ye unbody'd soul do's fare;

In that mysterious 0 none knows,
But ~B alone to wm it goes ;
To whom departed souls return
To take thir Doom to smile or mourn.

Oh! by w* glimm'ring light we view
The unknown O we're hast'ning to!
God has loek'd up ye- mystic Page,
And curtain 'd darkness round ye stage!
Wise 8 to render search perplext
Has drawn 'twixt ys O & ye next
A dark impenetrable screen
All behind wch is yet unseen !
We talk of « , we talk of Hell,
But w* yy* mean no tongue can tell!
Heaven is ye realm where angels are
And Hell ye chaos of despair.
But w' yDS9 awful truths imply,
None of us know before we die !
Whether we will or no, we must
Take ye succeeding O on trust.

This hour perhaps or Frd is well,
Death-struck, ye next he cries, Farewell!
I die ! and yet for ought we see,

Ceases at once to breath & be

Thu8 launch 'd f™ life's ambiguous shore
Ingulph'd in Death appears no more,
Then undirected to repair,
To distant Os we know not where.
Swift flies the U, perhaps 'tis gone
A thousand leagues beyond ye sun ;
Or 2oe 10 thousand more 306 told
* Thsy.

THE PARSON IN HIS LIBRABT 151

Ere ye forsaken clay is cold !

And yet who knows if Frnds we lov'd

Tho' dead may be so far reraov'd;

Only ye vail of flesh between,

Perhaps yy watch us though unseen.

Whilst we, yir loss lamenting, say,

They're out of hearing far away;

Guardians to us perhaps they're near

Concealed in Vehicles of air,

And yet no notices yy give

Nor tell us where, nor how yy live ;

Tho' conscious whilst with us below,

How much yms* desired to know.

As if bound up by solemn Pate

To keep ye secret of yir state,

To tell yir joys or pains to none,

That man might live by Faith alone.

Well, let my sovereign, if he please,

Lock up his marvellous decrees ;

Why shd I wish him to reveal

W he thinks proper to conceal?

It is enough y* I believe

Heaven 's brightr yn I can conceive ;

And he y* makes it all his care

To serve God here shall see him there!

But oh ! w' O s shall I survey

The moment y' I leave yB clay?

How sudden ye surprize, how new!

Let it, my God, be happy too.

The Unknown O is but one of many poems that Sterne
scribbled off for the entertainment of himself and his friends.
On his annual visits to Skelton, it was his custom to recite
cock-and-bull stories after the type of the one assigned to
him in Crazy Tales. In collaboration with his host, he com-
posed, it it said, on one of these occasions, the following
classical inscription for the front of the reservoir which sup-
plied Skelton Castle with water:
* Themselves.

152 LAURENCE STERNE

"Leap from thy mossy' cavern 'd bed,
Hither thy prattling waters bring,
Blandusia's Muse shall crown thy head,
And make thee to a sacred spring. ' '

In a quite different mood is the ode that Sterne inserted in
Tristram Shandy, beginning "Harsh and untuneful are the
notes of Love", and suddenly breaking off in the second
stanza with "0 Julia!" But from these brief poems and
numerous facetious and sentimental verses that once floated
through newspapers and magazines as Sterne's, one quickly
returns to The Unknown © . This clever meditation, with its
warning to "my gay friend", and the flight of the soul to a
region three score and ten thousand leagues beyond the sun
before the clay which it left became cold, is the best that the
Muse could do for Laurence Sterne.

CHAPTER VII

A GOOD WAEM WATCH-COAT

1751-1759

When Sterne wrote his meditations in verse and prose
cannot be determined within narrow limits-. A quotation
from Pope's Essay on Man in the fragment addressed to
Mr. Cook and another in a letter to Miss Lumley before she
became Mrs. Sterne, may indicate a very early date, if the
reader wishes to take the coincidence that way. But this and
the other meditation may really belong to any year of the
Sutton period. The point to be observed about them is that
they give us a glimpse of Sterne exercising his pen in the
moral and devotional themes of a great poet, rather apart
from his prevailing mood ; for he had not yet picked up the
talent that lay nearest to him. Among his friends, as we
have drawn his portrait at Stillington Hall and Skelton
Castle, he was in no sense a moralist, but a parson who loved
a jest above all else. During his last years at Sutton he
belonged to a convivial club, composed of several clergymen
and substantial citizens of York, who assembled o 'nights at
Sunton's Coffee-House in Coney Street, fast by the George
Inn. Anecdotes were set afloat of what he said and did when
chosen president of the evening, but they are too impalpable
to find record here. As yet he had published nothing by which
his wit could be judged. Now accident brought the occasion
and he made the most of it.

Accident indeed brought the humourist into print ; but in
the incidents of his life previous to the event, one may see
working a half-conscious plan. As early as the date of the
quarrel with his uncle over political paragraphs in the news-
papers, Sterne perhaps had a vague notion that he might
some day write for himself; for while in the act of turning
author, he announced to his friends, as the reason for it, that

153

154 LAURENCE STERNE

he was tired of employing his brains for other people's
advantage. Much of his curious reading also looks like
special preparation for a literary career; but his farming
was for years an encumbrance that impeded him greatly.
Fortunately for literature, his land projects had issued in
miserable failure. Some months before the awards were
made to him under the Sutton Enclosure Act, he resolved to
rid himself of unnecessary parish business — land, tithes, and
the botheration of all taxes. So he informed, late in the
autumn of 1758, the Kev. John Blake in a letter concluding
with the paragraph:

"I thank God, I have settled most of my affairs — let my

freehold to a promising tenant have likewise this week let

him the most considerable part of my tyths, and shall clear
my hands and head of all county entanglements, having at
present only ten pounds a year in land and seven pounds
a year in Corn Tyth left undisposed of, which shall be quitted
with all prudent speed. This will bring me and mine into
a narrow compass, and make us, I hope, both rich and happy."

And in memory of his sad experiences at Sutton, he wrote,

six months before his death, to a certain Sir W who was

planning to open marl beds upon his estate, to warn him
against an undertaking sure to end in disaster. "I was
once", said Sterne in his humour, "such a puppy myself, as
to pare, and burn, and had my labour for my pains, and two
hundred pounds out of my pocket. Curse on farming (said
I), I will try if the pen will not succeed better than the spade.
The following up of that affair (I mean farming) made me
lose my temper, and a cart load of turnips was (I thought)
very dear at two hundred pounds.

"In all your operations may your own good sense guide

you bought experience is the devil. Adieu, adieu!

Believe me yours most truly, L. Sterne."

While Sterne was interchanging letters with Blake about
his farming, the weather, and parish business, it began to be
noised about the coffee-houses that trouble was brewing
among the clergy and officials of the cathedral ; that the dean,
to give a detail or two, had broken a solemn promise ; that the
dean and the archbishop were at the point of a complete

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT 155

breach, etc. At the heels of these rumours, which were spread
far beyond York by country gentlemen who had come in for
the election, the quarrel broke forth into a warfare of pam-
phlets. For the first time since his appointment to Sutton,
Sterne was then at full leisure. The contested election of the
year was over, his oats were threshed, his barley had been
sold to the maltman, and his farm and tithes had been leased
to a neighbour for a series of years. As friend and champion
of the dean, Sterne entered the broil with rare zest, bringing
it to a close in a burst of ridicule and laughter.

The story of this quarrel, which terminated in Sterne's
facetious History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat, may be
pieced together from the several pamphlets that were issued,
the York Courant, and the local records of the time. Its
beginnings go back to intrigues and dissensions immediately
after the coming of Archbishop Hutton and Dean Fountayne.
Some account of the fracas has been given in an earlier
chapter; it now remains to add those details which concern
Sterne and his first excursion into the literature of wit. The
archbishop, said Sterne, "might have had his virtues, but the
leading part of his character was not Humility". The dean,
an old college acquaintance of the humourist, was a colourless,
good-natured ecclesiastic, inclined however to insist upon his
prerogatives. Neither of these dignitaries resided in York.
The archbishop's palace was then, as now, at Bishopthorpe,
two or three miles out of the city; and the dean passed most
of his time at Melton, his estate in South Yorkshire, Little
differences that early sprang up between them were fomented
by Dr. Francis Topham, the leading ecclesiastical lawyer at
York. Dr. Topham, a year or so older than Sterne, "was
descended from an ancient and honourable family of York-
shire". Bred to the law, he graduated LL.B. from Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1734, and received from the
same university the degree of LL.D. in 1739. Whether the
two men met at Cambridge, it is not said ; but they both set-
tled at York in the same year or thereabouts, where Dr. Top-
ham quickly established himself in the favour of those high
in the Church. Any office, however small, he was ready to
snap up for the increase of his income. He became in course

156 LAURENCE STERNE

of time, though he did not yet enjoy all these positions,
Commissary and Keeper-General of the Exchequer and Pre-
rogative Courts of the Archbishop of York, "Official to the
Archdeacon of York, Official to the Archdeacon of the East
Riding, Official to the Archdeacon of Cleveland, Official to the
Precentor, Official to the Chancellor, and Official to several
of the prebendaries". He was thus able to lay by, needless
to add, a handsome fortune, destined to be squandered by a
spendthrift son.

Never satisfied with the offices that he held, Dr. Topham
was always manoeuvring for more. In the course of a few
weeks after Dean Fountayne came to York in the winter of
1747-48, one or more friends of the hungry lawyer recom-
mended him to the dean as a person eminently qualified for
any legal position that might fall directly within the dean's
patronage or might be secured for him through the dean's
vote and interest in the chapter. It was well known that
Dr. Topham had his eye at this time on two ecclesiastico-legal
offices that were sure to become vacant very soon ; to wit, the
Commissaryship of the Peculiar Court of Pickering and
Pocklington, which was in the dean's absolute gift, and the
Commissaryship of the Dean and Chapter of York, in the
disposition of which the dean's voice, as Jiead of the chapter,
was potent above all the rest. The two offices, valued
respectively at six and twenty pounds a year, were then held
by Dr. William Ward, who was in feeble health and likely
to die at any moment. Subsequent to the application of his
friends, Dr. Topham had a formal interview with Dr. Foun-
tayne, which resulted in a general promise of the first office
and of the dean's aid in obtaining the other. But Dr. Ward
did not die so soon as was expected ; and in the meantime the
dean became less favourably impressed with Dr. Topham 's
character. A plan was devised whereby Dr. Ward should
remain in nominal possession of the two commissaryships,
while the fees should go to Dr. Mark Braithwaite, an advocate
in the ecclesiastical court, a poor but estimable man, who felt
unable to incur the legal expense incidental to the issue of
new patents to the offices in question. To this arrangement
Dr. Topham agreed with great reluctance and only, it was his

A GOOD WAEM WATCH-COAT 157

claim, on the assurance that the positions should fall to him-
self on the death of Dr. Braithwaite, who, though in fairly
good health, was of a delicate constitution as well as some-
what advanced in age. The dean, however, did not under-
stand it that way ; he thought himself rid of Dr. Topham and
all further solicitations from him or his friends. But he was
unacquainted with the resources of the man he had to deal
with. Dr. Topham, as the legal adviser to Archbishop Hut-
ton, watched closely the conduct of the dean, and on every
opportunity for creating friction between them, despatched
mischievous messages to his client when in London or wherever
else his Grace might be. In the autumn of 1748, a dispute
arose over the appointment of preachers in the cathedral.
The dean, it was averred, ordered the pulpit locked against a
prebendary chosen for the day by the chancellor. The dis-
pute lingered on through the following winter. As a reward
for his able defence of the archbishop's rights on this and
other occasions, Dr. Topham was appointed, on June 28,
1751, Commissary and Keeper-General of the Exchequer and
Prerogative Courts of the Archbishop of York, the most
comfortable office of all in the long list before enumerated.

In the meantime, so uncertain is human life, Dr. Braith-
waite had died ; and in June, 1751, the feeble Dr. Ward, who
had strangely outlived him by nearly a year,* followed in
his footsteps, leaving vacant the Commissaryship of the Dean
and Chapter and that of the Peculiar Court of Pickering
and Pocklington. Dr. Topham made a grasp for both of
them, notwithstanding the lucrative office he had just receivdd.
A majority of the chapter, he thought, were for his appoint-
ment to the first position. But the dean brought up the mat-
ter, it was alleged, when the lawyer's friends were absent, and
threw his influence in favour of William Stables, Bachelor
of Laws, who was easily elected on the first of August. Dr.
Topham 's charge that the chapter was made up against him
was indeed true, for there were present on that day only his
enemies — the dean, the canons residentiary— Charles Cowper
and William Berdmore — and Laurence Sterne. In spite of this
rebuff, Dr. Topham felt so certain of the second position that
* Torlc Cowant, August 21, 1750 and July 2, 1751.

158 LAURENCE STEENE

he had the patent for it made out, with his name written in
ready for the dean's seal. The dean however gave the one
legal office then in his sole gift to his friend Laurence Sterne.
The appointment, of which no record is discoverable, was
probably made within a week or two after the election of
"William Stables to the other position.

Dr. Topham raised a loud clamour over this shameless
betrayal of his hopes. It was everywhere given out by him
and his friends that the dean had promised him two patents
and had afterwards broken his word. This grave charge
the dean let pass until he came to York again, a few months
later, to preside over "a public Sessions Dinner" held
at the residence of George Woodhouse, a wine-merchant of
the parish of St. Michael-le-Belfrey. There were present
the usual company of prebendaries and other officials of the
chapter, Dr. Topham, and one or more country gentlemen.
Knowing that an extraordinary scene might occur at the
dinner, Sterne, always glad of a quarrel, rode in from Sutton.
As soon as the plates were removed, the dean, turning to Sir
Edmund Anderson of Kilnwick, openly accused Dr. Topham
of spreading abroad false reports to the harm and discredit
of the dean and chapter.

It is true, the dean admitted, that I once promised
Dr. Topham my own Commissaryship of Pickering and Pock-
lington; but he subsequently renounced all claim to it in
favour of Dr. Braithwaite. When it became vacant by the
death of Dr. Braithwaite and Dr. Ward (in whose name the
patent had remained), I looked upon myself as clearly and
fully at liberty to dispose of it as I pleased, certainly without
consulting Dr. Topham. As to the Commissaryship of the
Dean and Chapter, it was not, as you all know, mine to give
and I am not accustomed to promise what is not my own.
Dr. Topham 's affair is not with me but with the chapter in
which my vote is only one among thirty.

After a general statement of facts in this tenor — though
not in these words precisely, for we have only a few phrases
to go by,— the dean faced Dr. Topham and demanded an
explanation of his conduct. "Dr. Topham", to quote Sterne's
attested account of what took place, "at first disowned his

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT 159

being the Author of such a Story to the Dean 's Disadvantage ;
but being pressed by Mr. Sterne, then present, with an
undeniable Proof, That he, Dr. Topham, did propagate the
said Story, Dr. Topham did, at last, acknowledge it; adding,
as his Reason or Excuse for so doing, That he apprehended
(or words to that Effect) he had a Promise, under the Dean's
own Hand, of the Dean and Chapter's Commissaryship."
The dean then called upon "Dr. Topham to produce the
Letter in which such pretended Promise was made". Dr. v
Topham replied that he had not brought the letter with him,
or something like that. Whereupon the dean read to the
company a letter that Dr. Topham had written to him while
at Cambridge for his Doctor's degree in June, 1751, request-
ing the two commissaryships in succession to Dr. Ward.
Then he took from his pocket and read a copy of his own
curt reply, dated at Cambridge, July 2, 1751, in which
the application was ignored or merely alluded to in the
postscript: "I hope very soon to see you at York." Both
letters were acknowledged as genuine by the crestfallen
lawyer.

Only a little imagination is necessary on the part of the
reader to construct out of this legal phraseology a hot
encounter, as Mr. Sterne and the dean one after the other rise
to their feet, shaking forefinger or fist over Dr. Topham and
proving him a scoundrel. The way in which they silenced
their enemy redounds, it must be admitted, not so much to
their sense of justice as to their skill and adroitness. Three
years before this, the dean had certainly promised the lawyer
his own patent and his aid in obtaining the one in the joint
gift of himself and the chapter. He had simply changed his
mind. Dr. Topham, publicly set down a liar, kept quiet for
several years, so far as there is any record of it; but he was
only waiting for a good opportunity to return to the attack.
In the spring of 1757, Archbishop Hutton was appointed
to the see of Canterbury. His successor at York was Dr.
John Gilbert, for some years Bishop of Salisbury, At best a
man of mediocre talent and character, the new archbishop
counted for little in the diocese of York, owing to the many
physical infirmities that were coming upon him. He Ian-

160 LAURENCE STEBNE

guished rather than lived at Bishopthorpe. Dr. Topham was
a frequent visitor at the palace, making it his "Business
to inquire after every Place and Remedy that might help his
Grace in his Complaints". When the archbishop was too ill
to see him, the interviews and correspondence were carried on
between Dr. Topham and the archbishop's daughter, who
acted as secretary and adviser to her father in diocesan and
other matters. On first meeting the new archbishop, Dr.
Topham told him ' ' That he would find it very difficult, if not
impossible, to live upon good Terms with his Dean and Chap-
ter", for they were "A Set of strange People". The arch-
bishop was however assured by Dr. Topham that it was his
policy on all questions of dispute to espouse "the Interests
of the See of York, in Opposition to those of the Deanery".
The foundations were thus carefully laid for a fresh quarrel,
which first arose from a trivial incident.

In September, 1757, the archbishop issued, on the advice
of Dr. Topham, a mandate for the immediate induction of the
archbishop's brother into a prebend to which he had been
appointed. This was an unusual proceeding, inasmuch as a
delay of three days was customary between the reception of a
mandate and an induction. But the case was urgent. The
sick archbishop had just had a serious relapse when for the
moment his life was despaired of ; and should he die before
the installation of his prebendary, the title, it was pointed
out, would instantly accrue to the Crown. The chancellor
of the diocese, after consulting with the residentiaries, decided
to let the induction take the ordinary course. The dean,
though he could have known nothing of the incident at the
time, being absent at Melton, was nevertheless held responsi-
ble for "the dilatory Capitular Forms and Ceremonies of the
Church of York". Another point of dispute was over leases.
Dr. Topham set up the claim that when- the archbishop sends
a lease to the dean and chapter, "the Seal of the Corporation
ought to be put to it, upon its receiving the Assent and Con-
sent of a Majority of the Body Corporate", by the general
proxy which the dean was accustomed to leave with the
chapter for unimportant matters. On the other hand, it was
the dean's opinion that the seal ought not to be put to a lease

A GOOD WAEM WATCH-COAT 161

without "a special proxy" from himself. Dr. Topham called
the dean's attention to the statute of the thirty-third year of
Henry the Eighth against this and other favourite negative
powers of deans. The dean replied that he had never re-
garded a special proxy as quite essential in the case of leases,
but that Dr. Topham had always insisted upon one whenever
his own interests were involved.

It was not the intent of Dr. Topham, if we read him
aright, to force these differences to a breach between the
dean and the archbishop. He was simply ingratiating him-
self into special favour at the palace, that the archbishop
might be kindly disposed to a new and questionable scheme
on which his heart was now set. Back in 1751 the lawyer
had been blessed by the birth of a son, that Edward Topham,
playwright and libertine, who lived to bring into fashion
short scarlet coats, short white waistcoats, and long leather
breeches reaching well upwards to the chin, at a time when
everybody had been wearing very long coats, very long waist-
coats, but breeches very short in the waist, and thus very
troublesome to aldermen and all other modest men of con-
spicuous rotundity. "Through life it was a feather in my
friend Topham 's cap", said Frederic Keynolds, a brother
dramatist, "that when a boy, he was the unconscious founder
of Sterne's literary career."* For his son, already at his
accidence, the fond father wised to make handsome pro-
vision. On searching into the records of the dean and chap-
ter, he discovered that the patent of the Commissary of the
Exchequer and Prerogative Courts — his best paying office —
had formerly been granted and enjoyed for two lives instead
of for one life, as was then the custom. He naturally wished
a revival of the good old times. So he went to the arch-
bishop in the summer of 1758, and asked him for permission
to open his patent of the office, which read for one life only,
and "to add the Life of another proper Person to it", mean-
ing thereby, as it quickly transpired, the name of his own son.

The archbishop at first readily assented to the plan, out
of gratitude to the lawyer for his many services; but in the

* The Life and Times of Frederic 'Reynolds written oy himself, II,
190 et seq. (London, 1826).
11

162 LAUEENCE STERNE

course of the next few weeks, he began- to have doubts about
the wisdom of the proposal. The transaction could not be
completed, as Dr. Topham well knew, without the concurrence
of the dean and chapter, which was, under the circumstances,
quite difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, despite the arch-
bishop 's wishes. It is unnecessary to go far into the intrigues
and flatteries now practised by Dr. Topham to win the friend-
ship of the men whom he had grossly offended. Very amus-
ing, indeed, is a letter that he sent over to Melton, by Mr. John
Clough, registrar of the dean and chapter, to urge the dean,
as friend and well-wisher, to act favourably in the matter of
the patent at once before his elevation to a more exalted
station. "As I have", said the message, "very lately had a
private Intimation of the Bishop of Winchester having just
had some very alarming Symptoms, I must expect to be able
soon to congratulate you on your being added to the Bench
of Bishops." The dean sent back the following cooling-
card :*

"Melton, Aug. 14, 1758.
"Sir,

"I received your letter by Mr. Clough, and shall take the
first opportunity to examine the Registers in our Office relat-
ing to the Patents of the Commissary, and also to consult my
Brethren at York, upon the Affair you mention.

"I flatter myself that the Archbishop will not doubt of
my Readiness to comply with any Request his Grace may
make to me, being confident that he would not ask me to lend
a helping Hand for the depriving his Successors of any of
their customary Privileges of the Archbishoprick. "

"I am, Sir,

"Your most obedient
"humble Servant,

"J. FOUNTAYNE."

That the question might be settled once for all, the dean,
Dr. Topham, and several others were summoned to meet at
Bishopthorpe on the seventh of November for a general con-

* This letter and all details of the sessions dinner are given in An
Answer to a Letter addressed to the Dean of Yorlc in the Name of Dr
Topham (York, 1758).

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT 163

ference. The two chief dignitaries, who had been mis-
represented, each to each, by the intriguing lawyer, found
themselves agreeably of one opinion; that it was inadvisable,
notwithstanding ancient precedent, to grant the valuable
patent for more than one life. The lawyer, enraged at this
decision, says Sterne, "huffed and bounced most terribly",
threatening everybody from the archbishop down to a timid
surgeon, one Isaac Newton, who gave the story of the con-
ference to the coffee-houses. Nothing coming of these angry
violences, Dr. Topham decided to appeal to the public against
the dean, whom he charged with working upon the sick man
at Bishopthorpe. So during the second week in December
was launched his anonymous pamphlet entitled A LETTER
Address' d to the Reverend the DEAN of York; In which is
given A full Detail of some very extraordinary Behaviour of
his, in relation to his Denial of a Promise made by him to
Dr. TOPHAM. Though the sixpenny pamphlet set about to
deal principally with the commissaryship that fell to Sterne,
it nevertheless touched upon all the bickerings of a dozen
years. Two weeks later, the dean had ready his retort
courteous, which bore the title : An ANSWER To A LETTER
Address 'd to the DEAN of YORE, In the NAME of Dr.
TOPHAM. A feature of this very skilful reply was a formal
declaration (from which we have quoted), signed by Laurence
Sterne and other justices of the peace, as to what took place
at the Sessions Dinner at Mr. Woodhouse's. Had he desired,
the Vicar of Sutton could not well have kept out of the con-
troversy, for, as Dr. Topham had put it, Sterne's appoint-
ment to the courts of Pickering and Pocklington first brought
the quarrel to a head. In concluding his open letter, the
dean announced that he had taken leave of Dr. Topham
"once for all". Thus apparently sure of the last word, the
lawyer poured forth the phials of his wrath in A REPLY
TO THE ANSWER TO A LETTER Lately addressed to the
DEAN OF YORK. With considerable humour "a late
notable Performance", supposed to be the dean's, was
described as "the Child and Offspring of many Parents".
Mr. Sterne and some others, it was intimated, had been called

164 LAUEENCE STEENE

in by the dean for "Correcting, Revising, Ornamenting, and
Embellishing" his well-known faint and nerveless style.

The attestation and a phrase here and there in the dean's
pamphlet were without doubt Sterne's; but they count for
nothing in comparison with what Sterne now did. In his
retreat at Sutton he had been at work during the last week
on his own reply to Dr. Topham. Late in January, 1759,
just after Dr. Topham 's second pamphlet reached the coffee-
houses, Sterne had printed, ready for distribution, A Political

Romance, Addressed TO , Esq; OF YORK. To

which is subjoined a KEY: — better known among the hu-
mourist's works as A History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat.
As indicative of his aim, which was ridicule rather than
satire or controversy, the title-page bore the motto from
Horace :

"Ridiculum aeri
Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat Res."

The first edition of the Political Romance is so exceeding
rare that all who have written on Sterne have doubted its
being printed during the author's life-time. It was laid by
in Sterne's desk, say Mr. Percy Fitzgerald and Mr. Sidney
Lee, and at most circulated only in manuscript. This, we
now know, was not the case. A copy strayed up to London,
where it was reprinted in part in 1769, the year after Sterne's
death, by a bookseller in the Strand. The obscure printer
corrected the humourist's English, substituting elegant
phrases for quaint and homely idioms, and cut away the
Key and two long letters that go with it— in all, just one
half of the romance as originally written and published at
York early in 1759. It is this mutilated version only that
has been known to readers and biographers of Sterne. For-
tunately, however, a copy of the first edition found its way,
a half century or more ago, into the splendid collection of
Edward Hailstone, Esq., of Horton Hall, Bradford, England,
who lent it to Robert Davies, the antiquary, while preparing
his Memoir of the York Press (1868). On the death of
Mr. Hailstone in 1890, it passed with many valuable books
and manuscripts to the library of the dean and chapter at
York, where it was uncovered in September, 1905.- A few

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT 165

weeks afterwards another copy was found in a volume of
pamphlets at the York Subscription Library. Still another
copy, bound with the previous tracts in the controversy, has
long rested, it now turns out, in the library of Trinity College,
Cambridge. No other copies are known to exist.-

Sterne cast his narrative into the form of an allegory,
which becomes easy and delectable when we know the inci-
dents underlying it. To the end that seeming great things
might appear as small as they really were, the diocese of
York was cut down to a country parish, and the archbishop
thereby reduced to the rank of a village parson. The dean,
shorn of his surname, became merely John the parish clerk;
and the cathedral chapter figured as the church wardens.
Incidentally Mark Braithwaite appeared as Mark Slender,
and William Stables as William Doe. Dr. Topham, renamed
Trim, because he received so thorough a trimming at the last,
was degraded to sexton and dog-whipper of the parish; and
Sterne himself was slightly disguised under the name of
Lorry Slim.

The late parson and John the parish clerk, says the tale,
had just got snugly settled in the parish, when Trim "put it
into the Parson's Head, 'That John's Desk in the Church

was, at the least, four Inches higher than it should be :

That the Thing gave Offence, and was indecorous, inasmuch
as it approach 'd too near upon a Level with the Parson's
Desk itself. ' This Hardship the Parson complained of loudly,

and told John one Day after Prayers, ' He could bear

it no longer: And would have it alter 'd and brought

down as it should be.' John made no other Reply, but,

'That the Desk was not of his raising: That 'twas not

one Hair Breadth higher than he found it; and that as

he found it, so would he leave it. ' "

This stiff dispute, shadowing forth in allegory the quarrel
between Archbishop Hutton and Dr. Fountayne over the key
to the cathedral pulpit, was "Trim's harvest". For a few
days later John saw Trim emerging from the vicarage and
"strutting across the Church-yard, y'clad in a good creditable
cast Coat, large Hat and Wig, which the Parson had just
given him. 'Ho! Ho! Hollo! John!' cries Trim, in an

166 LAUBENCE STEENE

insolent Bravo, as loud as ever he could bawl 'See here,

my Lad! how fine I am.' 'The more Shame for you,'

answered John, seriously. — 'Do you think, Trim,' says he,
'such Finery, gain'd by such Services, becomes you, or can
wear well?' "

This was Sterne's way of saying that Dr. Topham had
secured the patent of the Prerogative Courts of York.

"A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" to deck himself
out with, Trim had also been trying for some time to coax
from John a pair of black plush breeches "not much the
worse for wearing". He "begged for God's Sake to have
them bestowed upon him when John should think fit to cast
them". John told him that he ought to be ashamed of him-
self for creating such a racket in the village about "an old-
worn-out-Pair-of -cast-Breeches, not worth Half a Crown".
"In the first Place", said he in allusion to Dr. Topham 's
many comfortable places, "are you not Sexton and Dog-

Whipper, worth Three Pounds a Year? Then you begg'd

the Church-Wardens to let your Wife have the Washing and
Darning of the Surplice and Church-Linen, which brings

you in Thirteen Shillings and Four pence. Then you have

Six Shillings and Eight Pence for oiling and winding up the

Clock, both paid you at Easter. The Pindar's Place which

is worth Forty-Shillings a Year, you have got that too.

You are the Bailiff, which the late Parson got you, which

brings you in Forty Shillings more. Besides all this, you

have Six Pounds a Year, paid you Quarterly for being Mole-
Catcher to the Parish."

The cast-breeches — Pickering and Pocklington — after cov-
ering the thin legs of Mark Slender for a time, eventually
fell to "Lorry Slim, an unlucky Wight, by whom they are

still worn ; in Truth, as you will guess, they are very thin

by this Time; — But Lorry has a light Heart; and what
recommends them to him is this, that, as thin as they are, he
knows that Trim, let him say what he will to the contrary,

still envies the Possessor of them, and with all his Pride,

would be very glad to wear them after him."

Though Trim had thus missed the plush breeches, he yet
"had an Eye to, and firmly expected in his own Mind, the

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT 167

great Green Pulpit-Cloth and old Velvet Cushion [the Com-
missaryship of the Dean and Chapter] , which were that very

Year to be taken down ; which, by the Bye, could he have

wheedled John a second time out of 'em, as he hoped, he had
made up the Loss of his Breeches Seven-fold. Now, you must
know, this Pulpit-Cloth and Cushion were not in John's Gift,

but in the Church-Wardens, &c. However, as I said

above, that John was a leading Man in the Parish, Trim

knew he could help him to them if he would: But John

had got a Surfeit of him; so, when the Pulpit-Cloth, &c.

were taken down, they were immediately given (John having
a great Say in it) to William Doe, who understood very well
what Use to make of them. ' '

After the old garments and worn pulpit decorations had
been thus divided up — William Doe, Trim, and Lorry Slim
each getting one or more pieces, — the parish fell back into its
usual monotonous drone for some ten years, and would have
droned on forever, had not the old parson left his flock for a
better living and his place been supplied by a new incumbent,
that is, by Dr. Gilbert. Then was struck up a lively tune.
Trim at once hastened to the rectory, that is, to Bishopthorpe,
to sell himself into servitude. Within a year, "he had", it
was his boast, " black 'd the Parson's Shoes without Count,
and greased his Boots above fifty Times; * * * he had run

for Eggs into the Town upon all Occasions; whetted the

Knives at all Hours: catched his Horse and rubbed him

down, * * * never came to the House, but ask'd his Man
kindly how he did. * * * When his Reverence cut his finger
in paring an Apple, he went half a Mile to ask a cunning
Woman, what was good to stanch Blood, and actually
returned with a Cobweb in his breeches Pocket."

For these services Trim demanded nothing but "an old
watch-coat that had hung up many years in the church",
apparently of use to nobody. But Trim had set his heart
upon it, humbly asking for it: "Nothing would serve Trim
but he must take it home, in order to have it converted into
a warm Under-Petticoat for his Wife, and a Jerkin for him-
self, against Winter; which, in a plaintive Tone, he most
humbly begg'd his Reverence would consent to. * * * No

168 LAURENCE STERNE

sooner did the distinct Words Petticoat poor Wife

warm Winter strike upon his [the parson's] Ear, — but

his Heart warmed, and, before Trim had well got to the End of
his Petition, (being a Gentleman of a frank and open Tem-
per) he told him he was welcome to it, with all his Heart and
Soul. 'But, Trim', says he, 'as you see I am but just got
down to my Living, and am an utter Stranger to all Parish-
Matters * * * and therefore cannot be a Judge whether 'tis
fit for such a Purpose; or, if it is, in Truth, know not

whether 'tis mine to bestow upon you or not; you must

have a Week or ten Days Patience, till I can make some

Inquiries about it ; and, if I find it is in my Power, I tell

you again, Man, your Wife is heartily welcome to an Under-
Petticoat out of it, and you to a Jerkin, was the Thing as good
again as you represent it.' "

Several days after this conversation, the parson, while
turning the leaves of the parish registry in his study, came
upon a memorandum about the watch-coat that opened his
eyes as to its dignity and value. "The great Watch-Coat",
he discovered, "was purchased and given above two hundred
years ago, by the Lord of the Manor, to this Parish-Church,
to the sole Use and Behoof of the poor Sextons thereof, and
their Successors, for ever, to be worn by them respectively
in winterly cold Nights, in ringing Complines, Passing-Bells,
&c which the said Lord of the Manor had done in Piety, to
keep the poor Wretches warm, and for the Good of his own
Soul, for which they were directed to pray, &c &c &c. ' Just
Heaven!' said the Parson to himself, looking upwards, ' What
an Escape have I had! Give this for an Under-Petticoat to
Trim's Wife! I would not have consented to such a Dese-
cration to be Primate of all England ; nay, I would not have
disturb' d a single Button of it for half my Tythes!'

"Scarce were the Words out of his Mouth, when in pops
Trim with the whole Subject of the Exclamation under both

his Arms. 1 say, under both his Arms; — for he had

actually got it ripp.'d and cut out ready, his own Jerkin under
one Arm, and the Petticoat under the other, in order to be
carried to the Taylor to be made up, — and had just stepp'd
in, in high Spirits, to shew the Parson how cleverly it had

A GOOD WAEM WATCH-COAT 169

held out." The parson, enraged at Trim's impudence, ordered
him "in a stern Voice, to lay the Bundles down upon the

Table, to go about his Business, and wait upon him, at his

Peril, the next Morning at Eleven precisely: Against this
Hour like a wise Man, the Parson had sent to desire John the
Parish-Clerk, who bore an exceeding good Character as a
Man of Truth. * * * Him he sends for, with the Church-
Wardens, and one of the Sides-Men, a grave, knowing, old

Man, to be present: For as Trim had with-held the whole

Truth from the Parson, touching the Watch-Coat, he thought
it probable he would as certainly do the same Thing to
others". The next morning at eleven, passions ran high at
the rectory. Trim pleaded the Parson's promise, and, failing
there, enumerated his humble services as the parson's man.
But all in vain. The "pimping, pettifogging, ambidextrous
Fellow * * * was kick'd out of Doors; and told, at his Peril,
never to come there again".

To the allegory which thus relates how Dr. Topham finally
met with signal disaster at Bishopthorpe, in his attempt to
cut up and make over for his son the patent of the Preroga-
tive Courts of York, Sterne subjoined an amusing postscript
on the numerous hands, including his own, that the church-
lawyer uncovered in the dean's pamphlet. They were all,
said Sterne, as imaginary . as the nineteen men in buckram
with whom Jack Falstaff fought at Gad's Hill. Then came
a gay tail-piece, which the printer wished to put on the title-
page, representing two game cocks, in full trim, beak to beak,
ready to strike.

Not able to stop here, though the story was really over,
Sterne appended to his allegory a humorous Key and two
letters, which cover, in the whole, as many pages as the entire
previous narrative. The Key, it might be observed, was
developed from Swift's "Grand Committee" that sat upon
the meaning of A Tale of a Tub. Since this part of the
romance, as aforesaid, has been seen by few men, and by
none of Sterne's biographers, it may be quite worth while to
give some account of it, if for no other reason than this.
But the continuation brings with it, as will be apparent at
once, some interesting facts about its author.

170 LAUEENCE STERNE

"This Romance", says the Key, which is of course no key,
"was, by some Mischance or other, dropp'd in the Minster-
Yard, York, and pick'd np by a Member of a small Political
Club in that City ; where it was carried, and publickly read
to the Members the last Club Night.

"It was instantly agreed to, by a great Majority, That it
was a Political Romance; but concerning what State or Poten-
tate, could not so easily be settled amongst them.

' ' The President of the Night, who is thought to be as clear
and quick-sighted as any one of the whole Club in Things
of this Nature, discovered plainly, That the Disturbances

therein set forth, related to those on the Continent: That

Trim could be Nobody but the King of France, by whose
shifting and intriguing Behaviour, all Europe was set to-
gether by the Bars: That Trim's Wife was certainly the

Empress, who are as kind together, says he, as any Man and

Wife can be for their Lives. The more Shame for 'em,

says an Alderman, low to himself. Agreeable to this Key,

continues the President, — The Parson, who I think is a

most excellent Character, is His Most Excellent Majesty

King George; John, the Parish-Clerk, is the King of

Prussia; who, by the Manner of his first entering Saxony,

shew'd the World most evidently,- That he did know how

to lead out the Psalm, and in Tune and Time too, notwith-
standing Trim's vile Insult upon him in that Particular. * * *
The Old-cast-Pair-of-Black-Plush-Breeches must be Saxony,

which the Elector, you see, has left off wearing: And as

for the Great Watch-Goat, which, you know, covers all, it
signifies all Europe; comprehending, at least, so many of its
different States and Dominions, as we have any Concern with
in the present War.

' ' I protest, says a Gentleman who sat next but one to the
President, and who, it seems, was the Parson of the Parish,
a Member not only of the Political, but also of a Musical
Club in the next Street ; 1 protest, says he, if this explana-
tion is right, which I think it is, — That the whole makes a
very fine Symbol. You have always some Musical Instru-
ment or other in your Head, I think, says the Alderman.

Musical Instrument ! replies the Parson, in Astonishment,

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT 171

Mr. Alderman, I mean an Allegory; and I think the greedy
Disposition of Trim and his Wife, in ripping the Great
Watch-Coat, to Pieces in order to convert it into a Petticoat
for the one, and a Jerkin for the other, is one of the most
beautiful of the Kind I ever met with ; and will shew all the
"World what have been the true Views and Intentions of the
Houses of Bourbon and Austria in this abominable Coalition. ' '
This hypothesis of the president, so ably supported by
the parson, met at first with a good deal of favour; but
before the evening was far advanced, one hardheaded mem-
ber after another began to ask questions, and then to suggest
other explanations of the Romance until the president was
made to tremble for his own hypothesis. "Every Man turn'd

the Story to what was swimming uppermost in his Brain ;

so that, before all was over, there were full as many Satyres

spun out of it, and as great a Variety of Personages,

Opinions, Transactions, and Truths, found to lay hid under
the dark Veil of its Allegory, as ever were discovered in the
thrice-renowned History of the Acts of Gargantua and
Pantagruel."

A gentleman at the opposite side of the table, who knew
nothing of the flirtations between France and Austria, but
"had come piping-hot from reading the History of King
William's and Queen Anne's Wars, * * * acquainted them,
That the dividing the Great Watch-Coat did, and could
allude to nothing else in the World but the Partition Treaty;
which, by the Bye, he told them, was the most unhappy and
scandalous Transaction in all King William's Life: It Was
that false Step, and that only, says he, rising from his Chair,
and striking his Hand upon the Table with great Violence;
it was that false Step, says he knitting his Brows and throw-
ing his Pipe down upon the Ground, that has laid the Founda-
tion of all the Disturbances and Sorrows we feel and lament
at this very Hour."

The debate, after many a wild-goose chase, was concluded
by a gentleman of the law who had been sitting quietly by

the fire. "He got up, and, advancing towards the Table,

told them, That the Error they had all gone upon thus far,
in making out the several Facts in the Romance, was in

172 LAURENCE STEKNE

looking too high. * * * He then took the Romance in his
Left Hand, and pointing with the Fore-Finger of his Right
towards the second Page, he humbly begg'd Leave to observe,
(and, to do him Justice, he did it in somewhat of a forensic
Air) That the Parson, John, and Sexton, shewed incontestably
the Thing to be Tripartite; now, if you will take Notice,
Gentlemen, says he, these several Persons, who are Parties
to this Instrument, are merely Ecclesiastical. * * * It ap-
pears very plain to me, That the Romance, neither directly
nor indirectly, goes upon Temporal, but altogether upon

Church-Matters. And do not you think, says he, softening

his Voice a little, and addressing himself to the Parson with

a forced Smile, Do not you think Doctor, says he, That

the Dispute in the Romance between the Parson of the Parish
and John, about the Height of John's Desk, is a very fine
Panegyrick upon the Humility of Church-Men?"

The parson, nettled by this insult to the cloth, made a
repartee on "the glorious Prolixity of the Law", which
"highly tickled" an apothecary in the company, "who had
paid the Attorney, the same Afternoon, a Demand of Three
Pounds Six Shillings and Eight-Pence" for a lease and

release. "He rubb'd his Hands together most fervently,

and laugh 'd most triumphantly" at the parson's clever hit.
The lawyer, understanding the real cause of the apothecary's
jocular humour, turned to him, and "dropping his Voice a
Third" said:

"You might well have spared this immoderate Mirth,
since you and your Profession have the least Reason to

triumph here of any of us. 1 beg, quoth he, that you would

reflect a Moment upon the Cob-Wei which Trim went so far
for, and brought back with an Air of so much Importance
in his Breeches Pocket, to lay upon the Parson's cut Finger.

This said Cob- Web, Sir, is a fine-spun Satyre, upon the

flimsy Nature of one Half of the Shop-Medicines, with which
you make a Property of the Sick, the Ignorant, and the
Unsuspecting."

Stung by this discourteous retort, the apothecary, a sur-
geon, a chemist, an undertaker, and another apothecary,
"were all five rising up together from their Chairs, with full

A GOOD WAEM WATCH-COAT 173

Intent of Heart, as it was thought, to return the Reproof

Valiant thereupon. But the President, fearing it would

end in a general Engagement, he instantly call'd out, To
Order" ; and thus saved a squabble. As soon as quiet was
restored, it was ordered that the Romance and the minutes of
the meeting likewise, as a key to the allegory, be printed at
once and under one cover. A whitesmith, who had remained
silent up to this time, objected to the publication of the Key
on the ground that it was not one Key but "a whole Bunch
of Keys". "Let me tell you, Mr. President, says he, That
the Right Key, if it could but be found, would be worth the
whole Bunch put together."

The key that the whitesmith longed for has been placed
in the reader's hand bright and clean; but the key to the
Key, so to speak, though it may be recovered, is now eaten
out by the rust of time. The transactions of the "political
club" by the Minster Yard, were, so far as we may surely go,
a burlesque of the evenings Sterne passed with his convivial
club that met at Sunton's Coffee-House in Coney Street.
Under the disguise of a surgeon, lawyer, apothecary, under-
taker, and the president who loved an hypothesis better than
his life, he drew little portraits of the members — their man-
nerisms and favourite gestures, and their vehemence in
canvassing local and larger politics of the day. "What kind
of men they were further than this or what names they bore
— we may never know, except, to be sure, that the Vicar of
Sutton is among them. He is the parson of the parish, smart
in repartee and ready to defend by a counter-jest an attack
upon the cloth that he wears, just as was related in the old
story of the puppy. There is, besides, that apt reference to
Rabelais, which shows what was running in Sterne's head;
and finally the gentleman who, like my uncle Toby, spent
his days and nights in reading of the wars of King William
and Queen Anne.

According to the fiction which the author adopted, the ro-
mance was read to the club and then sent to the printer. The
fiction, more likely than not, is the truth. Sterne may have
read the pamphlet to this company of friends, and then placed
the manuscript in the hands of one of them to watch it safely

174 LAURENCE STEENE

through the press of Caesar Ward, editor and publisher of
the York Courant, whose shop was nearby in the same street.
To a real or imaginary gentleman of York, who was to look
after the printing, Sterne sent in from Sutton precise direc-
tions, which were made a part of the pamphlet, following
next after the Key. The letter, which runs thus, is a curious
piece of humour:

"Sir,

"You write me Word that the Letter I wrote to you, and
now stiled The Political Romance is printing; and that, as it-
was drop'd by Carelessness, to make some Amends, you will
overlook the Printing of it yourself, and take Care to see that
it comes right into the World.

"I was just going to return you Thanks, and to beg,
withal, you would take Care That the Child be not laid at

my Door. But having, this Moment, perused the Reply to

the Dean of York's Answer, it has made me alter my

Mind in that respect; so that, instead of making you the
Request I intended, I do here desire That the Child be filiated
upon me, Laurence Sterne, Prebendary of York, &c. &c.
And I do, accordingly, own it for my own true and lawful
Offspring.

"My Reason for this is plain; for as, you see, the

Writer of that Reply, has taken upon him to invade this
incontested Right of another Man's in a Thing of this Kind,

it is high Time for every Man to look to his own Since,

upon the same Grounds, and with half the Degree of Anger,
that he affirms the Production of that very Reverend Gentle-
man's to be the Child of many Fathers, some one in his
Spight (for I am not without my Friends of that Stamp)
may run headlong into the other Extream, and swear, That

mine had no Father at all : And therefore, to make use of

Bay's Plea in the Rehearsal, for Prince Pretty-Man; I merely
do it, as he says, 'for fear it should be said to be no Body's
Child at all.'

' ' I have only to add two Things : First, That, at your

Peril, you do not presume to alter or transpose one Word, nor
rectify one false Spelling, nor so much as add or diminish

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT 175

one Comma or Tittle, in or to my Romance: For if you do,

In case any of the Descendents of Curl should think fit

to invade my Copy-Right, and print it over again in my
Teeth, I may not be able, in a Court of Justice, to swear
strictly to my own Child, after you had so large a Share in
the begetting it.

"In the next Place, I do not approve of your quaint Con-
ceit at the Foot of the Title Page of my Romance. It

would only set People on smiling a Page or two before I give

them Leave; and besides, all Attempts either at Wit or

Humour, in that Place, are a Forestalling of what slender
Entertainment of those Kinds are prepared within: There-
fore I would have it stand thus:

"YORK: x

"Printed in the Year 1759.
"(Price One Shilling.)

"I know you will tell me, That it is set too high; and as
a Proof, you will say, That this last Reply to the Dean's
Answer does consist of near as many Pages as mine ; and yet

is all sold for Six-pence. But mine, my dear Friend, is

quite a different Story: It is a Web wrought out of my

own Brain, of twice the Fineness of this which he has spun
out of his; and besides, I maintain it, it is of a more curious
Pattern, and could not be afforded at the Price that his is
sold at, by any honest Workman in Great-Britain.

"Moreover, Sir, you do not consider, That the writer is
interested in his Story, and that it is his Business to set it
a-going at any Price: And indeed, from the Information of
Persons conversant in Paper and Print, I have very good
Reason to believe, if he should sell every Pamphlet of them,
he would inevitably be a Great Loser by it. This I believe
verily, and am,

"Dear Sir,

"Your obliged Friend
' ' Sutton on the Forest, "and humb le Servant,

Jan. 20, 1759. "LAURENCE STERNE."

Having thus thrown off the mask of anonymity already

176 LATJEBNCE STEBNE

worn thin, Sterne closed the whole performance with a signed
letter to Dr. Topham, bearing the same date as the one just
quoted. The lawyer, in his last pamphlet, had questioned
the accuracy of Sterne's memory about the Sessions Dinner,
and hinted that the Vicar of Sutton had had a good deal to
do with the dean's previous pamphlet, as if Dr. Fountayne,
without the aid of friends, were not quite equal to a con-
troversy. Sterne took up in detail these and other points,
assuring Dr. Topham that he had nothing to do with the
dean's Answer beyond the attestation which he signed with
others, and that his memory was still good. "As for the
many coarse and unchristian Insinuations", said Sterne to

Dr. Topham, " scatter 'd throughout your Reply, as it is

my Duty to beg God to forgive you, so I do from my Heart :
Believe me, Dr. Topham, they hurt yourself more than the
Person they are aimed at; And when the first Transport of
Rage is a little over, they will grieve you more too. And

for the little that remains unanswered in yours, 1 believe

I could, in another half Hour, set it right in the Eyes of the

"World: But this is not my Business. And if it is

thought worth the while, which I hope it never will, I know
no one more able to do it than the very Reverend and Worthy
Gentleman whom you have so unhandsomely insulted upon
that Score."

After this pretty compliment to the dean, Sterne added a
postscript, which is, in conventional phrase, the best part of
the letter:

"I beg Pardon for clapping this upon the Back of the

Romance, which is done out of no Disrespect to you.

But the Vehicle stood ready at the Door, and as I was to

pay the whole Fare, and there was Room enough behind it,

it was the cheapest and readiest Conveyance I could

think of."

At the end of all came the archangel Gabriel, as an appro-
priate design, resting upon a bank of clouds and blowing
the last trumpet.

"Above five hundred copies" of the pamphlet, it was
said, "were struck off"; and "what all the serious arguments
in the world could not effect, this brought about." At once

A GOOD WARM WATCH-COAT 177

Sterne had at his feet both friends and enemies, begging that
the Romance be suppressed. Dr. Topham sent word that he
was ready, on this condition, to "quit his pretensions".
Certain members of the York chapter told Sterne that this
humorous recital of their disputes would never do. The
archbishop and the dean were, to say truth, each hand-
somely complimented by the way; but the laugh was, after
all, on them as well as on Dr. Topham ; the publication, from
any point of view was, they thought, offensive to the dignity
of the Church. Sterne heeded the advice of his brethren.
With his assent an official of the cathedral bought up the
copies remaining in the book-stalls, and burned them with
those still at the printer's. That was the current story
thirty years after. But several copies must have been sold
beyond recovery; and Sterne himself managed in some way
to keep from the flames "three or four" other copies which
he guarded for the delight of his friends.*

* For statements in this paragraph, see Whitefoord Papers, 229 ;
London Chronicle, May 3-6, 1760.

12

CHAPTER VIII

THE PUBLICATION OF TRISTRAM SHANDY-
VOLUMES I AND II
JANUAET 1759— MAY 1760

The burning of the Political Romance was a dramatic
incident that "contributed", according to the newspapers of
the next year, "more to raise the reputation of Parson
Torick, than any thing he could have published. * * * Ten
times more was said about this piece than it deserved, because
it was burnt; and the general voice, which never reports
without exaggeration, * * * cried it up as one of the most
perfect and excellent things human invention ever had pro-
duced". To Sterne the miscarriage of his first literary effort
was a keen disappointment, for "till he had finished his
Watchcoat, he hardly knew that he could write at all, much
less with humour so as to make his reader laugh". Having
once discovered his talent, the country parson, then in his
forty-sixth year, gave himself up to the exercise and delight
of it for the rest of his life. Tristram Shandy was begun — so
the book itself says by indication — late in January, 1759, im-
mediately after the mishap to the Political Romance. Sterne
wrote as fast as he "possibly could", reaching the eighteenth
chapter by the ninth of March, six weeks and some odd days
after first setting out. By the twenty-sixth of the same month,
he was well on in the twenty-first chapter; and by June, the
first draft of two 'volumes was completed. His genius bore
him on so easily and rapidly through the later stages that he
felt it was in him to write two more volumes every year so
long as he should live.

There were however times of doubt and depression. To
say truth, Tristram Shandy came near going the way of the
Political Romance. While the book was in making, Sterne
took some of the loose sheets over to Stillington Hall, where

178

PUBLICATION OF TBISTEAM SHANDY 179

he read them to Stephen Croft and a group of friends brought
together for the purpose after dinner. Some of the company
"fell asleep", said the brother of the squire, "at which
Sterne was so nettled that he threw the Manuscript into the
fire, and had not luckily Mr. Croft rescued the scorched
papers from the flames, the work wou'd have been consigned
to oblivion". As soon as the copy was fully written out,
Sterne consulted various friends at York about it. One of
them, who may stand for several, said: "I took the Liberty
to point out some gross Allusions which I apprehended would
be Matter of just Offense, and especially when coming from
a Clergyman, as they would betray a Forgetfulness of his
Character." In reply Sterne "observed, that an Attention
to his Character would damp his Fire and check the Flow of
his Humour, and that if he went on, and hoped to be read,
he must not look at his Band or his Cassock". Marmaduke
Fothergill of York, the younger of that name, whom Sterne
described as "my best of critics and well-wishers", kept
iterating: "Get your preferment first, Lorry, arid then write
and welcome." "But suppose", replied Sterne, "prefer-
ment is long o 'coming and, for aught I know, I may not

be preferred till the resurrection of the just and am all

that time in labour, how must I bear my pains." Against
the cautions of another he cited the name of a great predeces-
sor, saying: I * * * deny I have gone as far as Swift: he
keeps a due distance from Rabelais; I keep a due distance
from him. Swift has said five hundred things I durst not
say, unless I was Dean of St. Patricks." Finally, to ease
his "mind of all trouble upon the topic of discretion", Sterne
decided to appeal to Archbishop Gilbert, should his Grace
come down to York in the autumn. Whether or not the arch-
bishop read and approved, the author does not say.

When the book was ready for the press, as Sterne thought,
in June, he offered it to ' the local booksellers ; but ' ' they
wou'd not have anything to say to it, nor wou'd they offer
any price for it". He then tried the Dodsleys, the great
London publishers in Pall Mall. From the correspondence,
of which only one letter is extant, it appears that in June
Sterne wrote to one of the Dodsleys, Robert it would seem,

180 LAUEENCE STERNE

offering him Tristram Shandy for fifty pounds. Dodsley
wrote back "that it was too much to risk on a single volume,
which if it did not sell, would be hard upon his brother".
By this time Sterne was beginning to heed the strictures that
were passed upon his manuscript. Besides the caution of his
clerical brethren that he should consider the solemn colour
of his coat, to which a meditation upon death would be "a
more suitable trimming", some objections were made to his
aim and style. "To sport too much with your wit, or the
game that wit has pointed out", a nameless friend remarked
to him, "is surfeiting; like toying with a man's mistress, it
may be very delightful solacement to the inamorata, but little
to the by-stander". Though Sterne said in reply, "I have
burnt more wit than I have published," he nevertheless
promised to avoid the fault that was pointed out to him, so
far as he could without spoiling his book. To the same
critic, the mischance that befell Dr. Slop while approaching
Shandy Hall on a dark night seemed too minutely described.
Sterne defended himself by an appeal to the manner of
Cervantes, but finally brought himself to admit: "Perhaps
this is overloaded, and I can ease it." All who saw the
manuscript knew of course that Dr. Slop was a satire upon
Dr. John Burton; and there are indications that several did
not approve of the attack. As a result of these criticisms,
Sterne carefully revised his manuscript during the summer,
pruning and grafting. In June he had enough material,
said one who claims to have passed a whole night with him
over his papers, to fill "four volumes", instead of the two
that were eventually published.

Besides cutting away many passages — a half may be an
exaggeration — Sterne added, according to his own account,
"about a hundred and fifty pages", and took "all locality"
out of the book; that is, he removed here and there a sting
from the local satire. Thus amended, Tristram Shandy met
with great favour. By October, "a strong interest [was]
formed and forming in its behalf"; and the next month
rumour among his friends as far away as London, had it that
Mr. Sterne was "busy writing an extraordinary book".
Among the gentlemen at York who liked Tristram Shandy

PUBLICATION OF TKISTRAM SHANDY 181

because it made them laugh, was "a bachelor of a liberal turn
of mind" named Lee, who came forward early in the autumn
and promised Sterne "one hundred pounds towards the
printing". Fortified by this substantial sum, Sterne sub-
mitted new proposals to Dodsley, asking for his aid in placing
Tristram Shandy before the public. The letter to Dodsley,
bearing no date but belonging to October or thereabouts,
runs in part as follows:

"I propose * * * to print a lean edition, in two small
volumes, of the size of Easselas, and on the same paper and
type, at my own expense, merely to feel the pulse of the
world, and that I may know what price to set upon the
remaining volumes, from the reception of these. If my book
sells and has the run our critics expect, I propose to free
myself of all future troubles of this kind, and bargain with
you, if possible, for the rest as they come out, which will be
every six months. If my book fails of success, the loss falls
where it ought to do. The same motives which inclined me
first to offer you this trifle, incline me to give you the whole
profits of the sale (except what Mr. Hinxman [John Hinx-
man, a York bookseller] sells here, which will • be a great
many), and to have them sold only at your shop, upon the
usual terms in these eases. The book shall be printed here,
and the impression sent up to you ; for as I live at York, and
shall correct every proof myself, it shall go perfect into the
world, and be printed in so creditable a way as to paper,
type, &c, as to do no dishonour to you, who, I know, never
chuse to print a book meanly. Will you patronize my book
upon these terms, and be as kind a friend to it as if you had
bought the copyright?"

In a postscript Sterne added at the end: "I had desired
Mr. Hinxman to write the purport of this to you by this post,
but least he should omit it, or not sufficiently explain my
intention, I thought best to trouble you with a letter myself."

The arrangements for publication outlined in this letter
were afterwards somewhat modified, but just how can not be
determined beyond doubt, inasmuch as the succeeding cor-
respondence between Sterne, Hinxman, and Dodsley is irre-
trievably lost. According to John Croft, Dodsley now

182 LATJBENCE STEENE

offered Sterne forty pounds for the copyright* on conditions
which the author was unwilling to accept. Be that as it may,
by December, 1759, Sterne's perplexities over his book were
at an end, and he was anxiously awaiting his fame. In its
issue of January 1, 1760, the London Chronicle had the fol-
lowing announcement:

This Day was published,
Printed on a superfine Writing Paper, and a new
Letter, in two Volumes, Price 5s. neatly bound,

The LIFE and OPINIONS of
TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

York, printed for and sold by John Hinxman
(Successor to the late Mr. Hildyard) Bookseller in
Stonegate : J. Dodsley in Pallmall and M. Cooper in
Pater-noster-row, London : and by all the Booksellers.

"Whether this first instalment of Tristram Shandy was
really printed at York or at London is a question in dispute
among bibliographers. Sterne's design, as may be seen from
the letter to Dodsley in October, was to place his book in the
hands of a local printer, most likely Ann Ward, widow and
successor of Caesar Ward, at the Sign of the Bible in Coney
Street, "with whose neat and accurate typography", says
Kobert Davies, the antiquary, "the author was well ac-
quainted". John Croft, in agreement with others, who ought
to have known, also says that the first edition, running to
"about two hundred copies", was "first printed at York",
and adds that Sterne sent a set of them up to Dodsley, who
"returned for an answer that they were not saleable".
Against these assertions the bibliographical evidence is nearly
if not quite conclusive. All copies of the first edition in two
volumes (so far as they have been inspected by the present
writer or described by others at first hand) contain on the
title-page the title: "The Life and Opinions of Tristram

* Neither this nor later instalments of Tristram Shandy were entered
at Stationers' Hall, though we find Sterne subsequently disposing of
his copyrights.

PUBLICATION OF TRISTKAM SHANDY 183

Shandy, Gentleman," a Greek quotation from the Encheiri-
dion* of Epictetus, the number of the volume, and the date
"1760". There is nothing more; no place of issue, no name
of publisher, no name of author. It is the same for all copies
extant, so far as they are known : for those now in accessible
private collections and for the copy — presumably an advance
copy — which Sterne presented to his physician, Dr. John
Dealtry of York.t The notion which still half obtains that
there was an earlier private edition of Tristram Shandy, per-
haps bearing on the title-page "York, 1759", is erroneous.
The paper and the typography of the first edition of the first
two volumes are precisely the same as those of the third and
fourth volumes, which were printed in London the next year
for R. and J. Dodsley. It is of course possible, though not
probable, that Dodsley, in bringing out the second instalment
of the book, exactly matched the paper and the type of the
York printer; but the natural inference is that Dodsley, on
terms not now known, likewise printed the first edition of
the first instalment; that he kept with reluctance a bundle
for the London market, and sent the rest down to York, to
John Hinxman, who may be regarded as the real publisher
of Tristram Shandy, in so far as it had any outside of the
author and his friend Mr. Lee. The book was quietly placed
on sale at York, without any advertisement in the local news-
paper until February 12, 1760.

It was a current story that Sterne set about and continued
Tristram Shandy as a relief to melancholy. "Every sen-
tence", it was said, "had been conceived and written under
the greatest Heaviness of Heart". Certain it is that the
composition of his book was accompanied by domestic troubles;
that might have crushed a man of grave temperament, but
they affected the light-hearted Yorick little if at all. The
last reference in Sterne's correspondence to his mother occurs
in a letter to John Blake in the autumn of 1758. He was
coming in to York, he said, and wished to see his mother. A
"Mrs. Sterne", most likely this unfortunate woman, who
may have been housed in "the common gaol at York" for a

**EyXeipt8iw) c. 5.

t This copy is described in the Athencewm, February 23, 1878.

184 LAUBENCE STEENE

time before the reconciliation with her son, was buried from
the church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey on May 5, 1759. It was
the church where her son had preached a charity sermon
many years before on the joy and rapture of the ancient
Hebrew woman when the prophet Elijah placed in her arms
her child, a moment before dead but now alive. His "proud
and opulent" uncle Jaques Sterne, of many titles and many
preferments, likewise died on the ninth of the following June,
and was buried in the parish church at Rise. He left no
children. Though the quarrel between uncle and nephew
still remained abroach, Laurence yet expected a legacy. But
just before death, Dr. Sterne, hitherto uncertain about the
disposition of his property, willed all of his "real and per-
sonal estate whatsoever" to his housekeeper, Sarah Benson,
widow, of the parish of St. Michael-le-Belfrey.* Disap-
pointed of his reasonable expectations, Laurence "was so
offended that he did not putt on mourning tho' he had it
ready, and on the contrary shewed all possible marks of
disrespect to his Uncle's memory".

The sentimental marriage with Miss Lumley had proved,
as might have been foretold, uncomfortable to both parties.
"Sterne and his Wife", said John Croft, in gathering up
local anecdotes," * * * did not gee well together, for she
used to say herself, that the largest House in England cou'd
not contain them both, on account of their Turmoils and
Disputes." Perhaps it was after one of these warm scenes
that Sterne sent his Latin epistle, from which we have al-
ready quoted, over to Hall-Stevenson about a projected trip to
London. He was sitting at the time in Sunton's Coffee-House
on the eve of departure, undisturbed by the loud conversation
around him, as he began recklessly: "Nescio quid est materia
cum, me, sed sum fatigatus et aegrotus de mea uxore plus

quam unquam et sum possessus cum diabolo qui pellet me

in urbem." Over against this letter with its disagreeable
inferences may be placed the rather pretty domestic scenes of
1758, when the parson and his wife, as described in the Blake
correspondence, were frequently taking a wheel together into

* The will was proved in the Prerogative Court of York on June 13,
1759.

PUBLICATION OF TEISTRAM SHANDY 185

York for their winter purchases and visits to friends. But
sometime in 1759, affairs reached a crisis, owing, rumour had
it, to Sterne's misconduct. His wife, suddenly stricken with
palsy, "went out of her senses", and "fancied herself the
Queen of Bohemia". Her husband, falling in with the whim
of her delusion, "treated her as such, with all the supposed
respect due to a crowned head". "In order to induce her to
take the air", it was said further, "he proposed coursing in
the way practised in Bohemia. For that purpose he pro-
cured bladders and filled them with beans and tied them to
the wheels of a single horse-chair, when he drove madam into
a stubble field. With the motion of the carriage and the
bladders' rattle it alarmed the hares and the greyhounds were
ready to take them."* The sad condition of Mrs. Sterne
affected the health of little Lydia, who had been ailing for
some time, throwing the "poor child into a fever". On the
approach of winter, Sterne took a small house in the Minster
Yard at York for his wife and daughter, that the one might
have the best medical attendance, and the other "begin danc-
ing" and be put to school. Of Lydia, he said: "If I cannot
leave her a fortune, I will at least give her an education. ' '

Kegardful as was Sterne for the comfort of his family,
the illness of his wife nevertheless sat lightly upon him.
While she was living by the minster, perhaps under the care
of "a lunatic doctor", the unsteady parson consoled himself
by carrying on a flirtation with Miss Catherine Fourmantelle,
a professional singer, then in lodgings with her mother at
Mrs. Joliffe's, close by in Stonegate. The Fourmantelles
belonged to a family of French Protestants who fled to Eng-
land for refuge in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth. ' ' They
styled themselves", said John Murray, the London publisher,
who informed himself in the matter, "Beranger de Four-
mantel, and possessed estates in St. Domingo, of which they
were deprived by the measures consequent on the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. An elder sister, it appears, con-
formed to the Church of Eome, returned to Paris, and was
reinstated in the family property, "t The younger sister,

* John Croft, Scrapeana, 22, (second ed., York, 1792).

t Murray 's preface to Sterne 's letters to Miss Fourmantelle as
originally published in Miscellanies of the PMlobiblon Society, II (Lon-
don, 1855-56).

186 LAUEENCE STERNE

Catherine, a woman of much beauty and good character as
well as birth, endeavoured to support herself and mother by
her voice. She came to York, apparently in the autumn of
1759, under an engagement to perform through the winter of
1759-60 at the annual subscription concerts held in the As-
sembly Rooms. On the evening of November 29, for example,
a day of thanksgiving throughout Great Britain for Admiral
Hawke's victory over the French, the event was celebrated at
York by a concert of vocal and instrumental music in which
"Miss Fourmantel" took part with "the best voices in town".
She again sang at the Assembly Rooms on the last day of
the year and enjoyed during the ball that followed her per-
formance a tete-a-tete with Yorick over his "witty smart
book". At his dictation, she wrote of him the next day to
an acquaintance in London: "You must understand he is a
kind and generous friend of mine, whom Providence has
attach 'd to me in this part of the World, where I came a
stranger." Near the close of her engagement, there was a
concert for her benefit at the Assembly .Rooms, for which she
thanked "the Ladies and Gentlemen who honour 'd her with
their Presence".* The progress of the sentimental intrigue
is recorded in a series of brief notes that Sterne sent to Miss
Fourmantelle during her stay at York. In the first of them,
Sterne was not quite certain how his advances would be
received, for he wrote :

"Miss, I shall be out of all humour with you, and

besides will not paint your Picture in black, which best
becomes you, unless you accept of a few Bottles of Calcavillo,
which I have ordered my Man to leave at the Dore in my

Absence; the Reason of this trifleing Present, you shall

know on Tuesday night, and I half insist upon it, that you

invent some plausible Excuse to be home by 7. Yrs.

Yorick."

Miss Fourmantelle was evidently glad of the delicious
wine and the assurance that she should have her portrait, if
all went well on the next Tuesday evening. The sweet
Calcavillo was succeeded by "a pot of sweetmeats" and "a
pot of honey", though Miss Fourmantelle was "sweeter than
all the flowers it came from", and, most strangely, by a copy
* York Cowrant, Feb. 5 and 19, 1760. The benefit was on Feb. 15.

PUBLICATION OP TEISTRAM SHANDY 187

of Sterne's first printed sermon, along with the following
letter :

"My Dear Kitty, 1 Beg you will accept of the inclosed

Sermon, which I do not make you a present of merely because
it was wrote by myself, but because there is a beautiful Char-
acter in it, of a tender and compassionate mind in the picture
given of Elijah. Read it, my dear Kitty, and believe me
when I assure you that I see something of the same kind and
gentle disposition in your heart which I have painted in the
Prophet's, which has attach 'd me so much to you and your
Interests that I shall live and dye your affectionate and faith-
ful Laurence Sterne.

"P. S. — If possible I will see you this afternoon, before
I go to Mr. Fothirgils. Adieu, dear Friend! I had the
pleasure to drink your health last night."

The intimacy grew until it became at last "My dear, dear,
Kitty", and "I love you to distraction * * * and will love
you to eternity."

This open flirtation — for the two met and conversed pub-
licly at the Assembly Rooms and at the houses of mutual
friends, and went shopping together at the mercer's — seems
to have caused little or no scandal in easy-going York.
Before Tristram Shandy went to press, Sterne touched upon
the episode here and there in his book, wherein "dear, dear
Kitty" becomes "dear, dear Jenny", wife, mistress, or child,
whichever of the three the reader wills. The relation was,
however, if Sterne's word is to be taken for it, "but that
tender and delicious sentiment, which ever mixes in friend-
ship, where there is a difference in sex".

Tristram Shandy, coming out at this time, made its way
rapidly. "Writing for Sterne from York to her friend in
London on January 1, 1760, Miss Fourmantelle said : ' ' There
are two Volumes just published here, which have made a
great noise and have had a prodigious run; for, in two days
after they came out, the Bookseller sold two hundred, and
continues selling them very fast." Tristram Shandy was
for York, first of all, a local book, in a measure like the
Political Romance, but moving through a larger and less
perilous series of portraits than that afforded by religious

188 LAURENCE STERNE

controversy. The author had, to be sure, "altered and new
^dressed" the first draft for the removal of "all locality"; but
it could not have been changed in its prime essentials. Indeed
it is hinted in the book itself that a. key might be prepared
to certain passages and incidents which have "a private inter-
pretation". As many times related, Sterne depicted himself
as prebendary and rural parson in the indiscreet and out-
spoken Yorick who scattered his "gibes and his jests about
him", never thinking that they would be remembered against
him. Other characteristics of Sterne came out in Mr. Tris-
tram Shandy, the name by which he first chose to be known
in letters, and most appropriately, for shan or shandy is still
a dialectical word in parts of Yorkshire for gay, unsteady,
or crack-brained. It is of course really Sterne who speaks
when Mr. Tristram Shandy says, after complaining of his
asthma: "I have been the continual sport of what the world
calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying,
She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal

evil; yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm

it of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn
and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious
duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures
and cross accidents as ever small HERO sustained."

The elder Shandys, father and uncle, were obviously less
specialised portraits, being the compound of many observa-
tions and memories reaching back to boyhood, when Laurie
and his mother followed the poor ensign's regiment from
barrack to barrack. A claim was put forward in Macmillan's
Magazine for July, 1873, that my uncle Toby had an original
in "a certain Captain Hinde" of Preston Castle, Berkshire.
Sterne, it is said, made frequent visits to this "old soldier

and country gentleman, * * * eccentric full of military

habits and recollections simple-hearted, benevolent, and

tenderly kind to the dumb creatures of the earth and air".
There may be something in this persisting tradition, but the
main hobby of my uncle Toby was evidently a hit at Sterne's
friend — of uncertain name— in the Key to the Political
Romance, who, with mind filled with the exploits of Marl-
borough, insisted on interpreting the incidents of the church

PUBLICATION OF TRISTKAM SHANDY 189

quarrel in the terms of King William's wars. Mr. Wklter
Shandy also belongs, in one or more of his characteristics^ to
that convivial company which met at Sunton's Coffee-HouSe.
He was a further development of the president of the evening,
who set forth his hypothesis as soon as the members were
assembled, and fought for it stubbornly to the last ditch,
preferring death to surrender. Yorkshire likewise knew that
Eugenius, who plays the part of good counsellor to Yorick,
meant John Hall-Stevenson, and people must have relished
the absurdity.

To Dr. Topham, Sterne merely alluded by the way, under
the name of Didius, the great church-lawyer, who had "a
particular turn for taking to pieces, and new framing over
again, all kinds of instruments" in order to insert his legal
"wham- wham". Him he reserved for future instalments of
his book, shifting his satire in the meantime to Dr. John Bur-
ton, renamed Dr. Slop, Papist and man-midwife. No one
could doubt who was intended by "the little, squat, uncourtly
figure * * * waddling thro' the dirt upon the vertebrae of
a little diminutive pony" out to Shandy Hall to try his
newly invented forceps upon the head of Mr. Tristram
Shandy. To add to the gaiety of it all, Dr. Burton, wofully
lacking in a sense of humour, solemnly disclaimed all resem-
blance to the caricature Sterne had drawn of him. Then
another doctor of the neighbourhood, thinking that Sterne
might have meant him, called the parson up early one morn-
ing and entered vigorous protest against the "indecent liber-
ties taken with him". After vain attempts to persuade the
doctor of his error, Sterne, concludes the story, lost patience,
and remarked sharply as his visitor was going : ' ' Sir, I have
not hurt you; but take care: I am not born yet; but heaven
knows what I may do in the two next volumes. ' '

Amid the stir over Tristram Shandy at home, Sterne was
looking towards London. "I wrote", he said, "not to be
fed but to be famous." York might purchase the book for
its local allusions, jests, and ridicule of a well-known "scien-
tific operator ' ' seen on the streets every day ; but in London
it would be judged on its wider merits, if it had any, quite
apart from personalities. Could Tristram Shandy stand that

190 LAURENCE STEENE

test? To all appearance it was a mad performance not much
like anything that had ever come from the press. No wonder
Dodsley hesitated and perhaps refused to become its sponsor.
It is a novel, people would say, in which nothing happens,
in which everything is topsy-turvy, with a dedication, a mock
epistle at that, in the seventh chapter, and a sermon on
conscience at the end, — to pass over without comment an
impossible marriage-settlement, stars and long dashes, and
an entire page smutched with printer's ink. It is called the
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; but the
gentleman is only an embryo. It turns out to be the life and
opinions of the father and uncle of Tristram Shandy; and
why not call it so? That would be the publisher's point of
view; and in truth not much could be said for the book on a
cursory perusal.

But a reader at leisure could not fail to see that there
might be method in Sterne's madness: that every part of the
book, every episode, every digression, whim, aside, or in-
nuendo, was perhaps carefully premeditated, and the whole
organised on a plan which the author was keeping a half
secret. As the Greek motto on the title-page announced to
all who could read it, the book dealt not with adventures and
men in action, but with men and their opinions. Sterne"
knew that character may be revealed quite as well by what
men say as by what they do. If you know what a man really
thinks on a variety of subjects, there is nothing left to know
about him ; for you have got his heart and his brain. As if in
burlesque of petty details of childhood prevalent in current
fiction, Sterne set out with the conception and prenatal history
of his hero, bringing to bear on the ludicrous theme quaint
and musty speculations of medical writers over the animal
spirits and the nature, endowments, and rights of the
homtmculus. After merely stating when Tristram was born,
he proceeded to explain how, but stopping to describe the
preliminaries, he did not advance beyond them. Mention of
the midwife of the parish led Sterne on to the parson's wife
who set her up in business, and to parson Torick himself,
who could not be dropped without a full portrait, for he was
so singular in his habits, humours, friendships, and death.

PUBLICATION OF TRISTBAM SHANDY 191

That done, it was necessary to give some account of the hero's
father and mother — of Mr. Walter Shandy, a Turkey mer-
chant, who gained a competency in trade, and then retired
from London to Shandy Hall to pass the rest of his days
there with a dull and good-natured wife.

Naturally of an "acute and quick sensibility", the "little
rubs and vexations" incident to the marriage state made the
squire rather peevish towards others, though it was ' ' a drollish
and witty kind of peevishness". He was indeed so "frank
and generous ' ' in his heart that his friends never took offence
at the "little ebullitions of this subacid humour". They
rather enjoyed and relished it. Having nothing to do, Mr.
Shandy spent his time on the old books that had been col-
lected by his ancestors. In the course of his reading he fell
in with the logicians and minute philosophers, from whom
was derived the notion that there is something sacred about
an hypothesis, as a means of arriving at truth, especially
about a favourite one of his own making. "He was", says
Sterne, "systematical, and, like all systematick reasoners, he
would move both heaven and earth, and twist and torture
every thing in nature, to support his hypothesis." It was
his opinion "That there was a strange kind of magiek bias,
which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly
impressed upon our characters and conduct. * * * How
many CAESARS and POMPEYS, he would say, by mere
inspiration of the names, have been rendered worthy of
them? And how many, he would add, are there, who might
have done exceding well in the world, had not their char-
acters and spirits been totally depressed and NICODEMUS 'D
into nothing?"

It was quite right that the Yorkshire squire should have
a foil in his brother, my uncle Toby, unlike him in tempera-
ment and all else, save a crack in the brain that bespoke them
of the same Shandy blood. As a boy, my uncle Toby read
Guy of Warwick, The Seven Champions of Christendom, and
all the romances of war and adventure he could find in his
father's library or purchase with stray pence from the pedlar
of chap-books. A young man, he enlisted in King William's
army, and after years of honourable service, received an

192 LAURENCE STERNE

embarrassing wound in the groin at the siege of Namur.
Sent home, he retired to a neat house of his own near Shandy
Hall, and by the aid of Corporal Trim, set up on the bowling
green in the rear of the house-garden, fortifications with
"batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes", by means of which,
with the assistance of maps and books on military science, he
followed Marlborough's army on the Continent, demolishing
town after town in imitation of the great captain. "War,
which brutalises most men, developed in my uncle Toby all
the finer instincts of human nature. He was of a peaceful,

placid nature — "no jarring element in it, all was mixed

up so kindly within him; my uncle Toby had scarce a heart
to retaliate upon a fly.

" Go says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown

one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him

cruelly all dinner-time, and which after infinite attempts,

he had caught at last, as it flew by him; I'll not hurt

thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going

across the room, with the fly in his hand. I'll not hurt a

hair of thy head: Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and

opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape ; go, poor devil,

get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? This world surely

is wide enough to hold both thee and me."

These two brothers and the corporal, Sterne brought
together in the back parlour of Shandy Hall on an evening
while the parish midwife was above stairs with Mrs. Shandy.
Then entered Dr. Slop, the celebrated accoucheur, fresh from
disaster on the road, who was brain-cracked like the rest. At
once began, to end only with Trim's recital of the sermon,
the mad clash of opinions, accompanied by the most brilliant
wit, irony, and mockery. Safe to say there had been nothing
comparable to the performance since the days of Sir Toby
Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Not that Sterne really
imitated Shakespeare anywhere; but he thoroughly under-
stood Shakespeare's fools, and created anew a rare company
of them. Then he set them at their wild play.

In describing Tristram Shandy, I have done not much
more than paraphrase with free hand what was said of it
within a few months of its publication. The honour of writ-

PUBLICATION OF TEISTEAM SHANDY 193

ing the first printed account of the book belongs to one of
that company of literary hacks, who, with Ralph Griffiths at
their head, presided over the Monthly Review, which issued at
the end of every month from the sign of the Dunciad in the
Strand. The men on this magazine were all so dull, said
Dr. Johnson, that they were compelled to read the books
which they undertook to review. The scribbler to whom
Tristram Shandy was assigned for December, 1759, prepared
a long and faithful appreciation, patched with striking
excerpts, and mild censure of the style as too much in the
manner of Swift, and closing with a cordial recommendation
of Mr. Tristram Shandy to the reader, "as a writer infinitely
more ingenious and entertaining than any of the present race
of novelists." Next came a paragraph of general praise in
the Critical Review for January, 1760, managed by a society
of smart gentlemen whom Smollett had brought together and
trained, if I may quote the great lexicographer once more, to
review books without ever reading them. The London Maga-
zine followed in February with a high-flown apostrophe,

beginning ' ' Oh rare Tristram Shandy ! Thou very sensible

humorous pathetiek humane unaccount-
able! what shall we call thee? Rabelais, Cervantes,

What ? * * * If thou publishest fifty volumes, all abounding
with the profitable and pleasant like these, we will venture
to say thou wilt be read and admir'd." By this time the
sketch of Parson Yorick, evidently the author himself, said
the reviewers, was circulating through the newspapers, with
blind conjecture as to who he might really be in the flesh.
During these months of suspense, Sterne was staying at
York that he might be near his wife and Miss Fourmantelle.
Thus far he could have discovered nothing very unusual in
the course his book was taking, though the reviews were rather
more favourable than might have been anticipated of so wild
a performance. Spice was now added to its reception by a
letter from a London physician of his acquaintance, who
took him to task for writing a book which could not "be put
into the hands of any woman of character", and for alluding
.under a gross Rabelaisian name, to a senile infirmity — "a
droll foible", Sterne called it— of the late Dr. Richard Mead,

13

194 LAUKENCE STEENE

one of the most distinguished physicians of the age. The
unknown physician* intimated that he was protesting not for
himself alone but with the assent of Dr. Mead's sons-in-law —
Sir Edward Wilmot and Dr. Prank Nicholls, physician to his
Majesty George the Second. After waiting four days for his
humours to cool, Sterne sent back a gay reply in repudiation
of the text that had been thrust upon him by his correspond-
ent: De mortuis nil nisi bonum. "I declare", averred Sterne
of the text: "I have considered the wisdom and foundation
of it over and over again, as dispassionately and charitably
as a good Christian can, and, after all, I can find nothing in
it, or make more of it, than a nonsensical lullaby of some
nurse, put into Latin by some pedant, to be chanted by some
hypocrite to the end of the world, for the consolation of
departing lechers." The letter further contained an adroit
defence of his conduct on all points and a casual statement
of his serious aim to do the world good by ridiculing what he
thought "of disservice to sound learning", wherever it might
be uncovered. His age certainly needed the correction which
it received from him, but of that it is not here to speak. Out
of this hot correspondence, of which nothing is left save
Sterne's one reply, came the news, just as Sterne would have
it, that while Tristram Shandy was causing "a terrible fer-
mentation" among London prudes and Sangrados, Garrick
had read, admired, and passed the book on to his friends.

II

With Garrick, the regulator of public taste, for its
sponsor, the success of Tristram Shandy might well seem
assured. Garrick 's world, as Sterne knew, comprised the
whole world of fashion. What cared Sterne for anybody
else? Fine ladies and fine gentlemen who were bored by
books, would read, he was aware, anything to which Garrick
gave the cue. London was as eager to see Sterne as Sterne
was to see London. The story which I have now to tell, much

*In Original Letters of Laurence Sterne, 88 (London 1788), the
physician is referred to as " Doctor L . ' ' Perhaps he may be identi-
fied with Dr. Thomas Lawrence, physician to Dr. Johnson, and for a
time an associate of Dr. Nicholls.

PUBLICATION OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 195

of it in the words of John Croft's reminiscences and Sterne's
own letters to friends at home, reads like romance rather
than sober history. The visit to London came about by mere
accident. On a morning of the first week in March, Stephen
Croft, John's brother, rode in from Stillington for the York
coach up to London. Meeting Sterne on the street, he offered
to take him along as a companion and to pay all expenses,
going and coming. Sterne at first demurred, saying that he
had scarce time to prepare for the journey and that it would
be wrong to leave his wife in her wretched illness. Sterne's
hesitancy was, however, easily overcome, and within an hour
after packing "his best breeches", he was on the way to
London. Reaching town, apparently on the evening of the
fourth, the squire and parson lodged with Nathaniel Cholm-
ley, Esq., a York friend, living at that time in Chapel Street,
.Mayfair. To the surprise of the two other gentlemen, Sterne
was missing the next morning at breakfast. He had gone out
to Dodsley's at the sign of Tully's Head in Pall Mall to test
the sale of his book. On enquiry of the shopman for the
works of Mr. Tristram Shandy, he was told that they "could
not be had in London either for Love or money". Later in
the morning he saw the great Dodsley himself, who readily
closed with him for a second edition of Tristram Shandy, and
for two volumes of sermons to be composed and published
within two months. There was some haggling with the pub-
lisher over the price. At first the author stood out for £650,
then dropped to £600, and eventually accepted, under the
terms of the agreement signed on May 19, £450. It seems
quite clear, however, that certain moneys advanced by Dod-
sley were not included in the final sum, for it was understood
by everybody — Gray, Walpole, and others — that the lucky
author received £600 or more for his book. No time was lost
on preliminaries. In the London Chronicle for March 8-11,
Dodsley announced that a new edition of Tristram Shandy
would appear in a few days. Elated by his first success,
Sterne further promised a fresh volume every year. After
placing this mortgage on his brains for the rest of his life, he
"returned to Chapell Street and came skipping into the room
and said that he was the richest man in Europe".

196 LAUEENCB STERNE

So swift ran the current of events during the next weeks
that our narrative can hardly keep up with it. On the morn-
ing of March 6, Sterne called upon "dear Mr. Garrick", and
in the evening of the same day attended Drury Lane, where
he was "astonished" by the great actor's performance. The
play for that night was Home's Siege of Aquileia, in which
Garrick took the part of the stubborn old Roman general who
preferred the welfare of his country to the life of his sons.
What occurred within the next day or two, we leave to a
letter, dated March 8, to Miss Fourmantelle, still at York.
Sterne was sitting solitary and alone in his bedchamber
after returning again from the theatre, as he wrote: "I
have the greatest honours paid and most civilities shewn
me, that were ever known from the Great ; and am engaged all
ready to ten Noble Men and Men of fashion to dine. Mr.
Garrick pays me all and more honour than I could look for.
I dined with him to-day, and he has promised Numbers of
great People to carry me to dine with 'em. He has given me
an Order for the Liberty of his Boxes, and of every part of
his House for the whole Season; and indeed leaves nothing
undone that can do me either Service or Credit ; he has under-
taken the management of the Booksellers, and will procure
me a great price."*

On first meeting, Garrick told Sterne of a wild rumour in
circulation that William Warburton, just elevated to the see
of Gloucester, was to be introduced into the next instalment
of Tristram Shandy as the tutor of Master Tristram. An
allegory, to give the story as elaborated by the clubs, had
been run up on the life of Job. Warburton was to appear as
Satan, who smote the ancient patriarch from head to foot,

* Sterne is reported to have told the story differently to his London
friends. Aceording to that version, Garrick at first presented him only
with the freedom of the pit at Drury Lane. Meeting the actor some
time later, Sterne remarked that Beard, though there was no acquaintance
then between them, had offered him the freedom of the whole house over
at Covent Garden. "I told him on the occasion," Sterne is made to
say of Garrick, "that he acted great things and did little ones: — So he
stammered and looked foolish, and performed, at length, with a bad
grace, what his rival manager was so kind as to do with the best grace
in the world — But no more of that — he is so complete on the stage, that
I ought not to mention his patch-work off it." — Original Letters of
Laurence Sterne, 60-61 (London, 1788).

PUBLICATION OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 197

while other well-known polemical divines — Zachary Grey,
Charles Peters, and Leonard Chappelow, who had been en-
gaged in angry disputes with Warburton, two of them on
the Book of Job — were to be brought in as Job's miserable
comforters. Through it all, my uncle Toby and Corporal
Trim were to operate on the distinguished tutor in the way
they had already done with Dr. Slop in compelling him to
listen to the sermon on conscience. Sterne had apparently
come to London with a half-formed plan similar to this
whirling in his head. Had he stayed at home and gone on as
was intended, he might have produced a burlesque, as rich
as deserved, of the vain pedantries of Warburton and his
assailants. But once in London and once aware of the posi-
tion Warburton held among the bishops, nothing remained
for Sterne but to lay the "vile story" to the malice of his
enemies. Unable to sleep because of it, Sterne wrote off, near
midnight of the sixth, a hurried letter to Garrick asking for
an introduction to the author — "God bless him!" — of the
Divine Legation. The next morning, Garrick sent a note to
Warburton on the "impertinent story", and received an
immediate reply from Grosvenor Square, in which the bishop
expressed a desire to have the distinction of Mr. Sterne's
acquaintance. At this first meeting, Sterne was pleased, one
can well understand, to find that Warburton had already
recommended Tristram Shandy to the best company in town,
and defended the book in "a very grave assembly" of bishops,
apparently against the attacks of Dr. Thomas Newton, the
editor of Milton and soon the Bishop of Bristol. Eager to
become his patron, Warburton presented Sterne, on one of
his visits to Grosvenor Square, with a purse of guineas, and a
bundle of books for the improvement of his style. Sterne
took the guineas and kept them. He took the books also, but
treated the advice that accompanied them with the contempt
it deserved. No situation more humorous can easily be
imagined than the dull and heavy Warburton instructing the
light-hearted Yorick out of Aristotle and Longinus. So
unusual was the gift of guineas that it led to a report, though
there was nothing in it, that Warburton devised this way
to escape becoming tutor to Mr. Tristram Shandy.

^98 LATJBENCE STERNE

The patronage of Warburton, the friend and editor of the
late Mr. Pope, as well as the champion of orthodoxy, made
Sterne's brilliant reception doubly sure. Garrick could
announce to the clubs that he had talked and dined with the
author of Tristram Shandy, who was just arrived in town.
He was a Yorkshire parson named Sterne, Garrick would
say ; the strangest sort of man he had ever met with ; a bundle
of contradictions, a jester and sentimentalist like the Yorick
of the book, but withal a most agreeable gentleman, easy and
affable in manners; in speech wild and reckless mostly, but
at times uttering studied compliments in cleverly turned
phrases, as if he had long been an adept in the art. It was
Warburton 's business to make enquiries of Yorkshire clergy-
men in London respecting Sterne's life in the north — how he
was regarded by his brethren and how he had conducted him-
self as vicar and prebendary. The account Warburton
received of Sterne was in all respects "very advantageous".
The questionable jests in Tristram Shandy were clearly to be
ascribed to an exuberance of wit and to the bad taste of a man
who had lived out of the great world and its conventions;
they were mere scratches, so to speak, upon Mr. Sterne's
character, in no way penetrative of heart and brain. His
conscience at ease on the score of Sterne's morals, Warburton
took the author under his protection and recommended Mr.
Tristram Shandy to the whole bench of bishops as "the Eng-
lish Rabelais". The bishops did not know, said Horace
Walpole, in commenting on the incident, what was meant by
Warburton 's phrase, as they had never heard of the French
humourist.

From his two friends, the news that the author of Tristram
Shandy was really in London ran like a flame through society.
With a view to impending social demands, Sterne left Cholm-
ley's on the eighth of March ; and after looking over Piccadilly
and the Haymarket, moved into commodious lodgings at the
second house in St. Alban's Street, now no more, just off
Pall Mall. Stephen Croft, having finished his business, soon
returned into Yorkshire, while Sterne remained to reap the
personal delight of his fame. The new apartments, near
Dodsley's shop and in the very heart of fashion, became the

PUBLICATION OP TRISTRAM SHANDY 199

centre of extraordinary scenes. "Prom Morning to night",
Sterne wrote to Miss Fourmantelle, "my Lodgings, which by
the by, are the genteelest in Town, are full of the greatest
Company. I dined these two days with two ladies of the
Bedchamber; then with Lord Eockingham, Lord Edgecomb,
Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a Bishop, &c, &c. I assure
you, my Kitty, that Tristram is the Fashion." And again,
with additional details, his head still topsy-turvy: "My
Lodging is every hour full of your Great People of the first

Bank, who strive who shall most honour me : even all the

Bishops have sent their Compliments to me, and I set out on
Monday Morning to pay my Visits to them all. I am to dine
with Lord Chesterfield this "Week, &c. &c, and next Sunday
Lord Rockingham takes me to Court. I have snatch 'd this
single moment, tho' there is company in my rooms, to tell my
dear, dear, dear Kitty this, and that I am hers for ever and
ever. ' '

And so it went on to the end of the season. Every morn-
ing for two months Sterne's rooms were thronged with poli-
ticians, courtiers, and men of fashion; and every evening
Sterne was hurried off his legs in going to these great people.
It was most fitting that Rockingham, the future Prime
Minister, should have led the way in honouring the Yorkshire
author. At that time Rockingham was Lord-Lieutenant of the
North and East Ridings and Vice- Admiral of Yorkshire, with
a seat at Malton, not far from Sterne's livings. Since the
Marquis and Marchioness of Rockingham were regular sub-
scribers to the Assembly Rooms, where Miss Fourmantelle had
sung, Sterne was likely acquainted with both of them long
before coming to London. Winchelsea, related to Rockingham
by blood, was First Lord of the Admiralty. "Dick" Edge-
cumbe, wit and Privy Councillor, it may be conjectured, first
brought together Sterne and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two of
the men of rank who overwhelmed the author with attentions
were patrons of literature. Chesterfield, his political days
long over, had retired to his luxurious house and garden in
Mayfair, to devote himself to literature and the entertain-
ment of his friends. Lyttelton had been the companion of
Pope, Thomson, and Fielding, who dedicated to him Tom,

200 LAUBENCE STEENE

Jones, and never tired of praising his generosity, talents, and
large fund of learning.

Of the associations that were linking Sterne through
Lyttelton and Chesterfield to the great names of a past age,
none pleased him quite so much as the singular manner in
which Lord Bathurst sought him out at Carlton House a
few weeks later. Sterne never forgot that distinction. "He
came up to me", said Sterne long after, "one day, as I was
at the Princess of Wales's court. 'I want to know you, Mr.
Sterne; but it is fit you should know, also, who it is that
wishes this pleasure. You have heard, continued he, of an
old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have
sung and spoken so much ; I have lived my life with geniuses
of that cast ; but have survived them ; and, despairing ever to
find their equals, it is some years since I have closed my
accounts, and shut up my books, with thoughts of never
opening them again ; but you have kindled a desire in me of
opening them once more before I die ; which I now do ; so go
home and dine with me. ' ' '

It was in truth as fine a compliment as could be paid to
genius. The aged peer, who had been the patron and pro-
tector of two generations of literary men, was dying in
despair of ever meeting their equals again. He saw Sterne,
ordered his table spread again, and resolved to live once more.

Amid these honours came that preferment in the Church
which Sterne had missed ten years before. He had been
disappointed, one may remember, when Coxwold went to his
former curate, Kichard "Wilkinson, owing, it seemed quite
clear, to the opposition of his uncle and the Archbishop of
York. Since then Dr. Sterne had died and a new archbishop
was on the throne. On the tenth of March died also the
incumbent of Coxwold, most unexpectedly, for he was still
a young man. Within a few days after the news reached
London, Lord Fauconberg, then at Court, nominated Sterne,
on the solicitation of Stephen Croft, to the vacant living, then
estimated at £160 a year above the customary dues; and on
March 29, Archbishop Gilbert, who was passing the winter
at his house in Grosvenor Square near Warburton's, com-
pleted the appointment. By this act all of Sterne's sorrows

PUBLICATION OF TBISTBAM SHANDY 201

and tears were "wiped away". There was nothing more
that he could "wish or want in this world".

Near the same time, Sterne was painted in his clerical
gown by Sir Joshua Reynolds, at the request of Lord Ossory.
The painting afterwards passed to Lord Holland, and at his
death to the splendid gallery of the Marquis of Lansdowne.
It is a marvellous portrait in pose and feature. As if already
fatigued by three weeks of dinners, Sterne, say Reynolds's
biographers, propped himself up while sitting to the great
painter; and his wig contriving to get a little to one side,
Sir Joshua, with the insight of genius, readily took advantage
of the accident and painted it so, giving the head the true
Shandean air upon which Sterne prided himself. The face,
pale and thin, as one would have it, is all intelligence and
humour. Reynolds, glad to confront the lion of the hour
alone and face to face, would accept no fee. The portrait
was at once placed in the hands of Ravenet, who made a
mezzotint worthy of the original. With reference to it all,
Sterne wrote, his thought on a full purse: "There is a fine
print going to be done of me, so I shall make the most of
myself and sell both inside and out."*

In the meantime, Dodsley was hastening forward the
second edition of Tristram Shandy. At Garrick's table,
Sterne had sat with Richard Berenger, gentleman of his
Majesty's horse, a man of charming mind and manners con-
joined with the gayer vices of the age; a sort of Hall-
Stevenson bred to the city instead of to the country. To
Dr. Johnson he was "the standard of ideal elegance", and
Hannah More thought him "all chivalry, blank verse, and
anecdote". He bade Garrick's guest tell him all his wants
while in London, and he would fulfil them. Taking him at

* The statement, many times repeated, that Beynolds painted Sterne
at one sitting is quite erroneous. As shown by Beynolds 's Pocket Book
of appointments (MS now in possession of the Boyal Academy of Arts),
there were eight sittings: the first on March 20 and the last on April 21.

The famous portrait is carefully described by Graves and Cronin
in A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, III, 933-934 (Lon-
don, 1899) :

"Three-quarter length, canvas 50x40 in. . . . Sitting in a wig and
gown; right elbow on a table, forefinger to forehead; left arm bent,
hand to hip; knee breeches; on table are papers — on one, J. Beynolds,
pinxt 1760' — and inkstand; a ring on the little finger of left hand."

202 LAURENCE STERNE

his word, Sterne addressed to him, as the day for the new
edition of Tristram Shandy was approaching, a wild, profane
letter beginning: "What the duce can the man want now?
* * * The Vanity of a pretty woman in the hey-day of her
Triumphs, is a Fool to the Vanity of a successful author."
This reckless outpour of speech was but preliminary to '
an urgent request that Mr. Berenger, "a hard faced, impu-
dent, honest dog", should sally out to Leicester Fields and
demand of Mr. Hogarth "ten strokes" of his "witty chisel to
clap at the Front" of the coming Tristram Shandy. Hogarth
sent back, free of charge, Trim reading the sermon on con-
science in the back parlour of Shandy Hall before Dr. Slop
and the two brothers. According to John Croft, it had been
Sterne's idea, when first writing his book, to dedicate it to
"Mr. Pitt, then Secretary of State, that it might lay in his
Parlour "Window, and amuse him after the Fatigues of Busi-
ness as a lounging Book". Thinking, doubtless, that a dedi-
cation from a humble clergyman to the Great Commoner
might seem impertinent, Sterne abandoned the notion and
satisfied himself with a mock epistle to "any one Duke, Mar-
quis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron in these his Majesty's domin-
ions", who would pay fifty guineas for the honour. Though
still unacquainted with Pitt, Sterne could now have no hesita-
tion, for he felt himself the equal of any minister of state.
On the twenty-eighth of March, he sent his dedication over to
Pitt with a brief note, not exactly asking his approval so
much as taking it for granted that there could be no offence.
On the third of April, within a month after Sterne had
set foot in London, appeared the new edition of Tristram
Shandy, bearing the old title-page down through the sentence
from Epictetus to the addition :

"The SECOND EDITION.

"London:

"Printed for E. and J. DODSLEY in Pall Mall.

"M.DCC.LX."

All copies had, I think, the frontispiece by Hogarth, which
Ravenet engraved for Dodsley, and most, though not all, of
them contained the handsome tribute "To the Right Hon-

PUBLICATION OF TRISTKAM SHANDY 203

ourable Mr. Pitt", preceded by a paragraph on the circum-
stances under which the book had been written in "a bye
corner of the kingdom, and in a retired thatch 'd house".
There the author had lived, it was prettily said, "in a con-
stant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health,
and other evils of life, by mirth ; being firmly persuaded that
every time a man smiles, — but much more so, when he laughs,
it adds something to this Fragment of Life".

The second edition barely satisfied the market for the
remnant of the season. Before the end of the year, Dodsley
reprinted it twice again, making in all four editions within
a twelvemonth, to say nothing of several piracies. As his
book became more widely known, the adulation of Sterne
went on at a quicker pace than ever. "Tristram Shandy",
the poet Gray wrote to Thomas "Wharton on April 22, "is
still a greater object of admiration, the man as well as the
book. One is invited to dinner, where he dines, a fortnight
beforehand." "Dinners for a month to come" was John
Croft's estimate, so that "it allmost amounted to a Parlia-
mentary Interest to have his company at any rate". Giddy
with these attentions, Sterne invited Miss Fourmantelle to
come up to London and share with him the closing weeks of
his triumph. Obedient to Yorick's call, she reached town by
the middle of April and took lodgings in Meard's Court,
Soho, within the district of balls, concerts, and masquerades.
Sterne quickly saw that he had made a grave mistake in his
thoughtlessness. He might hold in the abstract that prudence
and discretion are only vices misnamed virtues; but the
intimate friend of Garrick and Warburton could not take
Kitty, in face of all the world, to Ranelagh or to the theatre,
however much she may have set her heart upon these amuse-
ments ; he could only send her tickets, with the hope that she
would use them for herself and her friends. With great
difficulty he contrived even to visit her for afternoon tea or
for a sentimental evening; and before many days, numerous
engagements to others so pressed upon him that he forgot all
his appointed hours with her. On a Wednesday he sent her
a note explaining why he had not called since Sunday and
putting off an engagement until Friday. Five days without

204 LAURENCE STERNE

seeing the woman whom he had sworn to make his wife,
should Providence so order, and to love forever and ever!
"Dear Kitty" could not compete, I fear, with the ladies of
her Majesty's bedchamber. So Sterne sent in his excuses
for neglect, and the beautiful singer drifted away through
concert halls nobody knows whither. The last letter, cutting
off a sentence, runs as follows:

"Dear Kitty, If it would have saved my Life, I have

not had one hour or half hour in my power since I saw you
on Sunday; else my dear Kitty may be sure I should not
have been thus absent. Every minute of this day and
to-morrow is pre-engaged, that I am as much a prisoner as if
I was in Jayl. I beg, dear girl, you will believe I do not
spend an hour where I wish, for I wish to be with you
always: but fate orders my steps, God knows how for the
present. Adieu ! Adieu ! ' '

How Sterne bore himself among the great people whither
fate called him away from dear Kitty and what they thought
of him, were told in the April number of the Royal Female
Magazine, issued on the first of May. The account was
immediately copied into nearly all of the London news-
papers. A notice so extended as this was rare in the press
of the eighteenth century, even on the death of men con-
spicuous in church and state. Sterne was in truth our first
writer about whom people cared much to know — how he
lived, how he looked, and what he said and did when among
his friends. The man who attempted to inform them was
Dr. John Hill, a literary hack and quack-doctor, celebrated
for an "elixir of Bardana" and various other nostrums,
"excellent beyond parallel". To his purpose, the physician
gathered up anecdotes running through the London clubs;
and in addition to this, he must have had recourse to a friend
of the author — perhaps Nathaniel Cholmley of Chapel
Street — for details of Sterne's career in the north. There
was in fact a hint abroad that Sterne himself furnished the
material. As is evident at a glance, the brief biography
that Dr. Hill wrote for the Royal Female Magazine contains
several inaccuracies, but its general truth is beyond con-
tradiction. It would be a mistake to imagine Sterne as an

PUBLICATION OF TRISTBAM SHANDY 205

awkward and unpolished country parson who had spent his
time in the cultivation of his glebe, though he had indeed
been engaged in that. He was a gentleman by birth who
had been bred at the university; and he had been the asso-
ciate of gentlemen all his life. His transition to London
society was thus not so abrupt as it might seem, abrupt
though it was. Notwithstanding many oddities, there was
grace, native and acquired, in his manners, so that he
adjusted himself to his new surroundings with the greatest
ease. "I think", said Dr. Hill, "he is the only man, of
whom many speak well, and of whom no body speaks ill.
* * * Every body is curious to see the author; and, when
they see him, every body loves the man. There is a pleas-
antry in his conversation that always pleases ; and a goodness
in his heart, which adds the greater tribute of esteem.
Many have wit; but there is a peculiar merit in giving
variety. This most agreeable joker can raise it from any
subject; for he seems to have studied all; and can suit it to
his company; the depth of whose understandings he very
quickly fathoms."

The humourist's ability to please by his smart jests and
repartees, was slightly qualified by John Croft, who wrote
of him: "Sterne was best and shewed himself to most ad-
vantage in a small company, for in a large one he was
frequently at a Loss and dumb-foundered. * * * He wou'd
frequently come out with very silly things and expressions,
which if they did not meet that share of approbation from
the Publick which he expected, he wou'd be very angry and
even affrontive." Started by Dr. Hill, a story went through
the newspapers of a sharp encounter between Sterne and
Dr. Messenger Monsey, long chief physician to the "Whig
politicians; a learned and skilful man, but ostentatious and
otherwise disagreeable in his behaviour. The incident created
so great a stir among Dr. Monsey 's friends, including Garrick,
that Sterne was compelled to soften some of the details, but
he could not deny the main facts. In a letter to Stephen
Croft, he claimed that Dr. Hill had made a mistake in the
physician and in the place where the encounter occurred. Be

206 LAURENCE STERNE

this is it may, Sterne silenced the man across the table to the
delight of the other guests:

"At the last dinner", says the tale as originally told,
"that the late lost amiable Charles Stanhope gave to Genius,
Yorick was present. The good old man was vexed to see a
pedantic medicine monger take the lead, and prevent that
pleasantry, which good wit and good wine might have occa-
sioned, by a discourse in the unintelligible language of his
profession, concerning the difference between the phrenitis,
and the paraphrenitis, and the concommitant categories of
the mediastinum and pleura.

" Good-humour 'd Yorick saw the sense of the master of
the feast, and fell into the cant and jargon of physic, as if
he had been one of Badcliffe's travellers. 'The vulgar prac-
tice', says he, 'savours too much of mechanical principles;
the venerable ancients were all empirics, and the profession
will never regain its ancient credit,' till practice falls into
the old tract again. I am myself an instance; I caught cold
by leaning on a damp cushion, and, after sneezing and
sniveling a fortnight, it fell upon my breast: they blooded
me, blistered me, and gave me robs and bobs, and lobocks,
and eclegmeta ; but I grew worse : for I was treated accord-
ing to the exact rules of the college. In short, from an
inflammation it came to an ADHESION, and all was over
with me. They advised me to Bristol, that I might not do
them the scandal of dying under their hands ; and the Bristol
people, for the same reason, consigned me over to Lisbon.
But what do I? why, I considered an adhesion is, in plain
English, only a sticking of two things together, and that
force enough would pull them asunder. I bought a good
ash-pole, and began leaping over all the walls and ditches
in the country. Prom the height of the pole I used to come
souce down upon my feet, like an ass when he tramples upon
a bull-dog: but it did not do. At last, when I had raised
myself perpendicularly over a wall, I used to fall exactly
across the ridge of it, upon the side opposite to the adhesion.
This tore it off at once, and I am as you see. Come fill a
glass to the prosperity of the empiric medicine.' "

By the first of May, Sterne, all worn out and jaded,

PUBLICATION OF TEISTfiAM SHANDY 207

began to turn his thoughts towards home. In his absence,
Stephen Croft had looked after the welfare of his wife and
daughter, supplying them with guineas and charging them
up to Sterne. Lydia was getting on well at school, though
she had been annoyed by being called Miss Tristram and
Miss Shandy. Mrs. Sterne was mending so that there could
be no further serious thought of Miss Fourmantelle. York
had been kept posted of Sterne's extraordinary reception by
letters from Cholmley to his friend at Stillington Hall. The
anecdotes related by Dr. Hill also came down with the Royal
Female Magazine, regularly taken at York, where they
caused some hostile comment, since they touched on local
affairs as well as on Sterne's courses in London. The be-
haviour of Sterne at dinner with the London physicians was
regarded as undignified; and the rumour that he was going
to ridicule Warburton, after accepting a purse of guineas
from him, disturbed the clergy, for they remembered the
Watch-Coat. Sterne naturally wished to see his family, to
set matters right, and to take up his preferment.

Several causes for delay, however, intervened. It was
most difficult for Sterne to withstand the pressure of friends
to stay on to the end of the month. At this time he was
receiving "great notice" from Prince Edward, just created
Duke of York. This royal scion, brother of the Prince of
Wales, soon to become king, was a good-humoured young
man who gave himself up to pleasure and all manner of social
functions. He had a tongue, says Walpole, that ran like a
fiddlestick. Some years later he passed over to the south of
Prance, and died there in consequence of cold and fever
caught by dancing all night. Sterne supped with the Duke
of York, and followed him to fashionable concerts where he
was expected to perform. There yet remained, too, the final
honour of all the honours that had been lavished on Sterne.
He was invited to Windsor. On the sixth of May, Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick, who had won the battle of Minden
the year before, was to be installed — in the proxy of Sir
Charles Cottrell Dormer — Knight of the Garter, along with
Earl Temple, then Lord Privy Seal, and the Marquis of
Kockingham, who, as said once before, had taken the York-

208 LAUBENCE STEENE

shire author under his especial protection. Nearly a week
was consumed by the journey to Windsor, the installation,
and miscellaneous festivities. The grand procession set out
from London with Sterne in the suite of Lord Rockingham.
It was a gorgeous scene in Saint George's Chapel on the next
day when the investiture of surcoat, belt, and sword took
place in accordance with the impressive rites peculiar to this
ancient order of chivalry. From the chapel the knights with
their retinues moved to the great guard-chamber, where a
dinner was served, says Sterne, at a cost of fourteen hundred
pounds. Before the second course, Garter King-at-Arms,
attended by his knight-companions, entered the hall and pro-
claimed the styles of Earl Temple and the Marquis of Rock-
ingham. At night there was "a magnificent ball and
supper"; and on the next morning the newly elected knights
and "the Right Hon. Mr. Secretary Pitt" were granted the
freedom of the borough of "Windsor. Sterne, then, if never
before, met the great statesman to whom he had dedicated
Tristram Shandy.

On returning to London with Lord Rockingham, Sterne
had still many engagements to clear off his books, two vol-
umes of sermons to watch through the press, and the final
contract to sign with Dodsley. There were two instruments,
each dated May 19, 1760. According to the one, Sterne was
yet to receive £450 on the sermons and the first instalment
of Tristram Shandy; according to the other, Dodsley agreed
to pay him £380 for two more volumes of Tristram Shandy
six months after publication.* With a part of the money
already paid in, Sterne purchased a carriage and a pair of
horses that he might drive down into Yorkshire "in a supe-
rior style". He set out, if he followed his plans of a week
before, on Monday the twenty-sixth, that he might surely be
in York on the next Sunday to preach in the minster before
the judges of the summer session. Here in the great cathe-
dral ended his triumph.

In beginning the story of how the Yorkshire parson came
into his fame, I said that it would read like romance. To
Sterne himself, it seemed all a dream; for writing to a

* WtilU't Cwrrent Notes, IV, 91 (Nov., 1854).

PUBLICATION OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 209

friend of his sojourn in London, he said : " I was lost all the
time I was there, and never found till I got to this Shandy-
castle of mine." On that March morning when Stephen
Croft by merest chance fell in with him at York, the author
of Tristram Shandy was a poor and obscure country parson
without the means of a journey to London. He was to be
"franked" up and back by the squire of Stillington. Within
three months he returned in his own carriage and driving
his own horses, the best that could be procured. Six weeks
at York and Sutton, and he was settled in his new parish.
No man was better known in all England. A wager was
laid in a company of London wits that a letter addressed
"Tristram Shandy, Europe", would reach the popular
author. The letter, says John Croft, duly reached York, and
"the Post Boy, meeting Sterne on the road to Sutton, pulled
off his hatt and gave it him".

14

CHAPTER IX

THE SERMONS OP MR. YORICK
MAY AND JUNE, 1760

Looked at in other lights, the visit to London loses some
of its brilliant hues. A successful author must expect many
annoyances, alike from the friends and from the enemies that
his books are sure to make; but Sterne perhaps encountered
more than any other of his century, if we except Pope. The
art, the jests, and the personal character of Mr. Tristram
Shandy were all themes for censure as well as for. praise. A
persisting source of irritation to Sterne was the sketch which
"Bardana" Hill drew of him for the newspapers. It had
been written with kindly intentions merely for the sake of a
guinea or two; but Sterne, unaccustomed as he was to anec-
dotes and chit-chat about himself, half-truths and half-lies,
magnified the good-natured article into a malicious attack
upon his honour as a gentleman. For a man so proud of his
ancestry as was Sterne, it nettled him, first of all, to be told
that he was "born of the barracks". Again, the incumbent
of Coxwold had died, leaving, like Trollope's Rev. Mr.
Quiverful, as his only estate a poor widow with unnumbered
children. A report, coming into print with Dr. Hill, went
current that Sterne had promised the destitute woman a hun-
dred pounds outright and a liberal pension. Disclaim it as
often as he would, the rumour pursued him through York-
shire to his perpetual embarrassment; for had he wished to
perform the charity, his means would not have allowed it.

Likewise the story that immunity from satire had cost
Warburton a purse of guineas could not be laid for all his
efforts. Sterne might set it down as a lie; but when it was
again put into circulation by Dr. Hill, everybody had it and
many believed it. Indeed Warburton, despite the gift, was
trembling for what might happen in the next instalment of

210

Laurence Sterne

From a painting by Reynolds at Lansdowne House

THE SERMONS OF MR. YORICK 211

Tristram Shandy. Add to this the indiscreet conduct of
Hall-Stevenson. Sterne had been in London but a few
weeks when his friend, assuming the name of "Antony
Shandy", greeted him with Two Lyric Epistles; of which
one was addressed "to my Cousin Shandy on his Coming to
Town"; while the other was in honour of "the Grown Gen-
tlewomen, the Misses of * * * * "; that is, the Misses of
York. It was not a squeamish age. "Fine ladies" as well
as "fine gentlemen" repeated and laughed at jests and
stories coarser than any in the collection of Mr. Tristram
Shandy; but Hall-Stevenson went rather beyond the relish
of well-bred people of either sex; and Sterne was held
responsible for his cousin Antony's offence against this better
public taste. Though that was not quite just, he neverthe-
less read the epistles in manuscript, showing them to his
acquaintance, and permitted them to go to Dodsley's press,
after striking out a stanza here and there. Over these
puerile verses, discreditable alike to all who had a hand in
them, the friendship between Sterne and Warburton was
strained near to the breaking-point. Sterne's full confession
and penitence barely saved him.

But Hall-Stevenson and Dr. Hill were only the beginning
of Sterne's troubles. Six weeks in London, and all Grub
Street broke loose at his heels. On its first appearance, the
reviewers for the standard monthlies had accepted, we have
seen, Tristram Shandy as a book of unusual wit when com-
pared with the humorous trash then coming from the press.
They did not know at the time that the author was a clergy-
man, deserving to be unfrocked for playing the part of a
king's jester. Their favourable opinion once delivered, they
remained silent on the reissue of Tristram Shandy, except
for casual reference to it, though they were but lying in wait
for an opportune moment to attack. For a time the news-
papers, whose printers, or editors as we should now call
them, took no pains to form an independent estimate, merely
reflected the magazines; but towards the end of April,
after the second edition of Shandy was out, they opened fire.
On April 28, the Public Ledger, to cite one instance, pub-
lished the first of a short series of imaginary letters from

212 LAURENCE STERNE

Mr. Tristram Shandy to his friend Bob Busby, in which the
young man claimed, in opposition to Sterne, that he had been
regularly born, and appealed to Dr. Slop in proof of it.

The merriment once begun, some one calling himself a
Quaker by name Ebenezer Plain-Cloth, sent a letter to the
editor in protest against the intrusion into public prints of
"the frontless face" of Tristram Shandy. This is a speci-
men of what Sterne might see on taking up a newspaper at
any time for the rest of his life. Scribblers who required
larger scope for their wit resorted to shilling pamphlets
running from forty to a hundred pages or more. Some of
these pamphleteers adopted an abusive tone, wildly charging
Sterne with various social and literary vices; while others
imitated or burlesqued his book solely in the hope of making
a few shillings out of its popularity. Of Sterne the man
they knew nothing and cared nothing one way or the other.
On reading the first of these lucubrations, Sterne remarked
in a letter from London to Stephen Croft: "There is a

shilling pamphlet wrote against Tristram 1 wish they

would write a hundred such. ' ' But as one mill after another
took to grinding out Shandy 's, Sterne grew uneasy. "The
scribblers", he began to complain, "use me ill, but they have
used my betters much worse, for which may God forgive
them." Finally, his nerves all shattered by three months
of social dissipation, he fell into a semi-insane delusion, just
as had occurred in the quarrel with his uncle, that a host
of "profligate wretches" were setting upon him in the dark
"with cuffs, kicks, and bastinadoes", that they might kill
him with the public. In one of these moods he wrote to
Warburton near the middle of June : " I wish from my heart
I had never set pen to paper, but continued hid in the quiet
obscurity in which I had so long lived; I was quiet, for I
was below envy and yet above want."

Heaven forbid that we should go far into the pamphlets
which so worked upon Sterne that he was on the point of
renouncing authorship, though the narrative might not be
without entertainment. "God forgive me", he wrote to
Miss Macartney, afterwards Lady Lyttelton, "God forgive
me for the Volumes of Ribaldry I've been the cause of."*
* Morgan Manuscripts.

THE SEEMONS OF ME. YOEICK 213

The pamphlet which Sterne wished, on first perusal, mul-
tiplied a hundred-fold was The Clockmaker's Outcry against
the Author of the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
According to the fiction of the elaborate jest, a number of
London clockmakers, meeting casually at their club, fall foul
of the notorious clock scene at the opening of Sterne's first
volume. One of the members, indignant beyond the rest at
the humourist's treatment of an honourable trade, takes up
Tristram Shandy, incident by incident, and denounces all,
even the death of poor Yoriek, which, though praised for its
pathos, is declared to be "intirely borrowed". Some one of
the company, if I remember correctly, ventured to put in a
word in favour of the clever "scale of beauty" which Mr.
Shandy applied to his mock dedication to any lord who
would pay for it. Swift came the retort from the inter-
rupted speaker to the effect that nobody should be so ignor-
ant as not to know that the scale was stolen from the
ingenious Mr. Spence's Crito, or Dialogue on Beauty* As
a whole, Tristram Shandy was pronounced to be nothing
more than an imitation of A Tale of a Tub. Only there is
this striking difference: Swift's wit is never without aim,
while Sterne drifts on helplessly from one poor jest to
another still poorer until he reaches inanity. In concluding
his discourse, the angry clockmaker charged Sterne with the
ruin of his business by degrading a harmless and necessary
piece of furniture. "The directions", he complained, "that
I had for making several clocks for the country, are now
countermanded; because no modest lady dares to mention a
word about winding up a clock, without exposing herself to
the * * * jokes of the family. * * * Alas, reputable, hoary
clocks, that have flourished for ages are ordered to be taken
down by virtuous Matrons and disposed of as * * * lum-
ber." The whimsical pamphlet bore an ironical dedication
to "the humblest of Christian prelates", that is, to the
ostentatious "Warburton, who was taken to task for abetting
Sterne's crime against society.

About this time issued from another press Explanatory

* So it was. See Spence, Fugitive Pieces on Various Subjects, I, 43-
45 (third edition, London 1771).

214 LATJKENCE STEENE

Remarks upon the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy;
wherein the Morals and Politics of the Piece are clearly laid
open, by one who claimed to be the son of the physician
whom Sterne had ridiculed in his seventh chapter. The
brochure, which need not be described here, closed with an
"Advertisement to the Mobility and Gentry of all Europe",
containing some good raillery of Sterne's great reception.
"As I expect", says the author, "in consequence of the fore-
going work, to receive invitations on every hand for parties

of pleasure, regales, dinners, and suppers in order to

prevent confusion in my engagements, and that I may not
make appointments with persons I am intirely ignorant of,
I beg the world, with all convenient despatch, send their
titles, names, and places of abodes, with cards to my book-
seller's, that I may pay compliments to them, according to
their different ranks; or, where upon a footing, according to
their alphabetical succession. N. B. Such noblemen, &c. as
chuse to give me testimony of their approbation of this book,
by particular marks of their beneficence, will please to take
notice, that no living, however lucrative, can be accepted as
I am not in orders. iS^I am particularly obliged to the
managers of both the houses, whose kind intentions I already
anticipate, in favouring me with the freedom of their respec-
tive theatres, and they may depend upon my compliments to

them in due time; but I am afraid I can not accept Mr.

[Garrick] 's kind invitation to his house at Hampton this
summer."

After these two pamphlets came the deluge: The Life
and Opinions of Miss Sukey Shandy, which cost two shillings
or double the usual price; Tristram Shandy at Banelagh, a
miserable performance; Tristram Shandy in a Reverie,
"printed on the same Size as Tristram Shandy and very
proper to be bound with it", containing a littera infernalis
from the departed Yorick to his admirers on earth; Letter
from a Methodist Preacher to Mr. Sterne; Letter from the
Rev. George Whitfield, B.A., to the Rev. Laurence Sterne,
M.A.; The Cream of Jest, or The Wits Outwitted * * *
being an entire new Collection of droll Wit and Humour,
written and collected by Corporal Trim during his Travels

THE SEEMONS OF ME. YOEICK 215

with Mr. Tobias Shandy, etc. etc. Something better than
any in this list was Yorick's Meditations upon Various In-
teresting and Important Subjects, * * * upon Nothing, upon
Tobacco, upon Noses, upon the Man in the Moon, etc., for
several reviewers took it to be really Yorick's, and the author
of the tract received sufficient encouragement from the public
to proceed with A Supplement to the Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, "the best ape", said the London Maga-
zine, "of the original Shandy we have yet seen". A more
elaborate continuation of Tristram Shandy appeared in Sep-
tember from the pen of one John Carr, the translator of
Lucian, and then or afterwards head-master of the Hertford
grammar school. It seemed to the schoolmaster that it was
time for Tristram to be born, and so he brought him into
the world. Carr attempted to pass off his book as a genuine
third volume of Tristram Shandy, but the critics quickly
detected the fraud. Prom these and similar burlesques,
criticisms, and forgeries, with which the London booksellers
flooded the town, Sterne could find no escape even in his
Yorkshire retreat. If he looked into a London or a local
newspaper, there they were all advertised; if he strolled into
a bookstall at York, there they stared him full in the face.
All this trash and abuse suggested, however, to an unknown
wit a practical jest that diverted Yorick exceedingly when
he heard of it some years later; and when it was related to
Dr. Johnson, it brought forth a rhinoceros laugh. A certain
gentleman, asking a friend to lend him an amusing book
from his private library, was recommended to try Hermes,
a dry and technical treatise on universal grammar by the
learned James Harris. "The gentleman from the title", so
the anecdote goes, "conceived it to be a novel, but turning it
over and over, could make nothing out of it, and at last
coldly returned it with thanks. His friend asked him how
he had been entertained. 'Not much', he replied, 'he thought
that all these imitations of Tristram Shandy fell far short of
the original.' "*

* Joseph Cradock, Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, I, 207-8
(London, 1826) ; and G. B. Hill, Johnsonian Miscellanies, II, 70-71
(London, 1897).

216 LAUEENCE STEENE

To have done with the scribblers who pestered Sterne
with tags to his book, it is noticeable that he saw few men
of letters while in London. The people who left their cards
at the genteel rooms in St. Alban's Street and invited the
popular author to their tables, necessarily lay outside the
realm of literature, except for a patronising nobleman here
and there, like Bathurst and Lyttelton. The men who were
earning an honest living by their pens could afford of course
no elaborate dinners; yet some of them might have made
Sterne's acquaintance, had they so desired. A compliment
to Easselas in Tristram Shandy was an open bid for the
friendship of Dr. Johnson; but Garrick never brought the
two men together. And when they did meet by mere acci-
dent more than a year later, it was with a clash of arms.
Dr. Johnson and the rest were content to watch Sterne's
progress through the mansions of the great and to make
their comments thereon, occasionally in praise but more often
in blame. For all the attentions lavished on him by rank
and wealth, Sterne did not stand very well the test of the
best critical opinion. Though he could not have known just
what was being said of him in private companies and in the
literary correspondence of the year, he was yet aware of a
very hostile undercurrent. So in his sober moments, he was
accustomed to liken himself, when complimented upon his
prodigious run, to a fashionable mistress, whom everybody
is courting because it is the fashion; but let a few weeks
pass, and she will in vain "solicit Corporal Stare for a
dinner".

It was not quite so bad as Sterne would make out.
Thomas Wharton, then at Old Park, near Durham, wrote to
the poet Gray in praise of Tristram Slumdy, and the Cam-
bridge recluse said in reply: "There is much good fun in it,
and humour sometimes hit and sometimes missed. I agree
with your opinion of it and shall see the future volumes with
pleasure."* On the other hand, Horace Walpole, in giving
Sir David Dalrymple of Edinburgh the literary news of the
month, took occasion to say: "At present, nothing is talked

* Letter to Wharton, July, 1760, in Works of Thomas Gray, edited
by E. Gosse, III, 53 (London, 1885).

THE SERMONS OP ME. YOEICK 217

of, nothing admired, but what I cannot help calling a very-
insipid and tedious performance : it is a kind of novel, called
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy; the great
humour of which consists in the whole narration always
going backwards. I can conceive a man saying that it would
be droll to write a book in that manner, but have no notion
of his persevering in executing it. It makes one smile two or
three times at the beginning, but in recompense makes one
yawn for two hours."* "A fashionable thing", Walpole
called Shandy in sending a parcel of books to Horace Mann
at Florence; and when he fell in with Sterne a few years
later at Paris, he found the man's talk as tiresome as his
writings. In neither, he said, was there anything to raise a
laugh, though one were in a mood for laughter.

Of men of letters, Goldsmith alone spoke out in print
against Tristram Shandy. Not yet author of the Vicar of
Wakefield, he was then contributing to the Public Ledger his
Chinese Letters, since known as the Citizen of the World.
Between Sterne and Goldsmith as they appear to-day, one is
impressed more by real similarities than by surface differ-
ences. Goethe, everybody knows, coupled the two names, in
order to say that their genial humour and sane philosophy
of life more than all else rescued him from Wertherian
despair. But Goldsmith, all form, disliked the broken style
of Sterne; and his imagination, immaculate as a maid's,
could not endure Sterne's salacious wit. And so gathering
up what gall there was in his white liver, he poured it forth
on Tristram Shandy in his newspaper for June 30, and in
subsequent issues, t From him may have come, indeed, the
Ledger's imaginary letters to which we have previously
referred. "I bought last season", said a London bookseller
to Goldsmith's Chinaman, "a piece that had no other merit
upon earth than nine hundred and ninety-five breaks, seventy-
two ha ha's, three good things, and a garter. And yet it
played off, and bounced, and cracked, and made more sport
than a fire-work. * * * Ah, sir, that was a piece touched

* Letter to Dalrymple, April 4, 1760, in Letters of Horace Walpole,
edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee, IV, 369 (Oxford, 1903).

t For example, the Public Ledger, September 17, 1760.

218 LAUBENCE STERNE

off by the hand of a master, filled with good things from one
end to the other. The author had nothing but the jest in
view; no dull moral lurking beneath, nor ill-natured satire
to sour the reader's good-humour; he wisely considered, that
moral and humour at the same time were quite overdoing
the business." At this point the visiting Oriental asked
why such a book was published ; and he quickly received the
reply: "Sir, the book was published in order to be sold; and
no book sold better, except the criticisms upon it, which came
out soon after." Sterne had revived, it was more directly
alleged by Goldsmith, two obsolete forms of humour not
much practised since Tom D'Urfey and his wretched crew.
They may be called "bawdry and pertness", and "they are
of such a nature, that the merest blockhead, by a proper use
of them, shall have the reputation of a wit: they lie level
to the meanest capacities, and address those passions which
all have, or would be ashamed to disown". And finally of
Sterne's style: "He must talk in riddles. * * * He must
speak of himself, and his chapters, and his manner, and
what he would be at, and his own importance, and his
mother's importance, with the most unpitying prolixity;
now and then testifying his contempt for all but himself,
smiling without a jest, and without wit professing vivacity."

Dr. Johnson, much as he despised Tristram Shandy,
thought Goldsmith went too far in writing the author down
a blockhead, though he had himself called Fielding a block-
head. Not this year but with reference to another aud
similar season, Johnson remarked to Goldsmith one day:
"The man, Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for
three months." "And a very dull fellow", added Gold-
smith. "Why, no, Sir", replied Johnson, and the conversa-
tion ended.*

Strict moralists of narrower outlook than Dr. Johnson
were enraged at Sterne's performance. Richard Farmer,
then classical tutor at Cambridge, spoke sharply to a com-
pany of students who in the very parlour of Emmanuel were
expressing admiration of Tristram Shandy. "Mark my

*Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, edited by Dobson, II, 44-45 (Lon-
don, 1901).

THE SERMONS OF ME. YORICK 219

words", was his solemn prophecy, "and remember what I
say to you ; however much it may be talked about at present,
yet, depend upon it, in the course of twenty years, should
any one wish to refer to the book in question, he will be
obliged to go to an antiquary to inquire for it."* Another
storm centre was Delville House overlooking the harbour of
Dublin, the residence of Mary Granville the Blue-Stocking,
and her husband Patrick Delany, the Dean of Down and an
old friend of Swift's. Faulkner, the Dublin bookseller,
cried up Tristram Shandy to one of their clerical friends,
and so they were on the brink of purchasing the book to read
aloud by the fireside, when a nofe of warning arrived from
Mrs. John Dewes, Mrs. Delany 's sister in England. Where-
upon the dean became "very angry" with Sterne, and de-
clared that the book should never enter his house. Mrs.
Delany, accepting her husband's decision, was terribly
alarmed that Tristram Shandy should have been received in
the household of Robert Clayton, Bishop of Cork and Ross,
whom it diverted more than offended. "Mrs. Clayton and
I" she wrote to 'her sister by the middle of May, "had a
furious argument about reading books of a bad tendency ;
I stood up for preserving a purity of mind, and discouraging
works of that kind — she for trusting to her own strength
and reason, and bidding defiance to any injury such books
could do her."t

Anxiety was felt in still other remote places for the
influence of Sterne upon the morals of the kingdom. Mark
Hildesley, for example, Bishop of Sodor and Man, and some-
time chaplain to Lord Bolingbroke, enquired in the postscript
of a letter to Samuel Richardson: "Pray, who is this Yorick?
(a prebendary of York, I know he is). But what say you to
his compositions, that have of late commanded so much of
the attention and admiration of the wits of the present age.
I am told, they have the countenance and recommendation

* B. N. Turner 's account of Dr. Johnson 's visit to Cambridge in
1765, in the New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register for Decem-
ber, 1818; and Johnsonian Miscellanies, II, 429.

t Mrs. Delany to Mrs. Dewes April 24, and May 14, 1760, in the
Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany,
first series, III, 588, 593 (London, 1861).

220 LAURENCE STEKNE

of some ingenious Dutchess: is this true or not?" Richard-
son wrote back: "Who is this Yorick? you are pleased to ask
me. You cannot, I imagine, have looked into his books:
execrable I cannot but call them." And then, casting his
more detailed opinion into the form of a letter from a young
lady in London to her friend in the country, the novelist
went on to say of Tristram Shandy: "It is, indeed, a little
book, and little is its merit, though great has been the writer's
reward! Unaccountable wildness; whimsical incoherencies ;
uncommon indecencies ; all with an air of novelty, has catched
the reader's attention, and applause has flown from one to
another, till it is almost singular to disapprove: Yet * * *
if forced by friends, or led by curiosity, you have read, and
laughed, and almost cried at Tristram, I will agree with you
that there is subject for mirth, and some affecting strokes,
* * * and I most admire the author for his judgment in
seeing the town 's folly in the extravagant praises and favours
heaped on him; for he says, he passed unnoticed by the
world till he put on a fool's coat, and since that every body
admires him!" After receiving Richardson's strictures
"upon the indelicately witty Yorick", the Bishop of Sodor
and Man "accidentally read" some passages in the book and
renamed it "Shameless Shandy."*

Moralists and men of letters as far apart in temper as
Richardson and Walpole, commonly excepted from their
reprobation Yorick 's "excellent sermon of a peculiar kind
on conscience", which Sterne had introduced into his book,
as one of a handsome volume at the service of the public.
Criticism like that which we have repeated, only less violent,
had been passed upon Tristram Shandy, from its inception,
by Sterne's clerical brethren at York who saw the manu-
script. Out of this criticism came no doubt the idea of
balancing his character, so to speak, by- following up the
book with a collection of his sermons. With this end in view,
he seems to have packed a bundle of them along with his best
clothes on that March morning when he set out for London
with the squire of Stillington. The preliminary agreement

•Mrs. A. L. Barbauld, Correspondence of Samuel Bichardson, V,
144-153 (London, 1804).

THE SERMONS OF ME. YOEICK 221

made with Dodsley a few days later was, it will be recalled,
not only for a second edition of Tristram Shandy, but also
for two volumes of sermons. After long delay and a con-
tinuous stream of advertisements in the newspapers, The
Sermons of Mr. Yorick made their appearance on the twenty-
second of May, the week before their author stepped into his
carriage for the journey homewards. The two volumes,
containing fifteen sermons in the whole, were brought out
in the form and type of Tristram Shandy, with the Reynolds
portrait as engraved by Ravenet for frontispiece. There was
a curious preface, written partly as an apology for the
author's pseudonym and for the haste with which the volumes
had been put through the press, and partly to explain their
character and to forestall a possible charge of plagiarism:

"The sermon which gave rise to the publication of these,
having been offer 'd to the world as a sermon of Yorick' s, I
hope the most serious reader will find nothing to offend him,
in my continuing these two volumes under the same title:
lest it should be otherwise, I have added a second title page

with the real name of the author : the first will serve the

bookseller's purpose, as Yorick' s name is possibly of the two

the more known; and the second will ease the minds of

those who see a jest, and the danger which lurks under it,
where no jest was meant. * * * I have little to say in their
behalf, except this, that not one of them was composed with

any thoughts of being printed, they have been hastily

wrote, and carry the marks of it along with them. — This may

be no recommendation ; 1 mean it however as such ; for as

the sermons turn chiefly upon philanthropy, and those kin-
dred virtues to it, upon which hang all the law and the
prophets, I trust they will be no less felt, or worse received,
for the evidence they bear, of proceeding more from the
heart than the head. I have nothing to add, but that the
reader, upon old and beaten subjects, must not look for many

new thoughts, 'tis well if he has new language; in three

or four passages, where he has neither the one or the other,

I have quoted the author I made free with there are some

other passages, where I suspect I may have taken the same
liberty, but 'tis only suspicion, for I do not remember it

222 LAURENCE STERNE

is so, otherwise I should have restored them to their proper
owners, so that I put it in here more as a general saving,
than from a consciousness of having much to answer for
upon that score."

The second title-page, which was added for the comfort
of the clergy and professional moralists, ran: "Sermons by
Laurence Sterne, A.M. Prebendary of York, and Vicar of
Sutton on the Forest, and of Stillington near York." Be-
tween the preface and the second title was printed a list of
six hundred and sixty-one subscribers, which gathered in
nearly every one -worth knowing in the kingdom — dukes,
duchesses, earls, and countesses; bishops, deans, university
fellows, canons, and prebendaries; statesmen, politicians, and
physicians; long rows of men who could write esquire after
their names, and Mr. Charles Burney, Mr. Garrick, Mr.
Hogarth, Mr. Reynolds, William Whitehead the Poet Lau-
reate, and Mr. Wilkes, Member for Aylesbury. In reading
through the list, one wonders what use could be made of
sermons by Wilkes, the profane politician, or by playwrights,
actors, and wits, like Beard and Rich and Delaval. But
taken as a whole, it was a handsome troop of titles and names
which Sterne could show to his Yorkshire friends in proof
of his great and sudden fame.

Sterne's sermons thus entered the world, guarded, as the
author thought, with every precaution for their safety: no
preface could be franker; no roll of patrons could be more
impressive. But within a fortnight they were visited by a
fierce assault from one of Griffiths 's men in the Monthly
Review for May. The point of attack was not the character
of the sermons themselves, but their appearance under the
assumed name of Mr. Yorick. This manner of publication,
the angry reviewer considered "as the greatest outrage
against Sense and Decency, that has been offered since the
first establishment of Christianity — an outrage which would
scarce have been tolerated even in the days of paganism.
* * * For who is this Yorick? We have heard of one of
that name who was a Jester — we have read of a Yorick
likewise, in an obscene Romance. But are the solemn dic-
tates of religion fit to be conveyed from the mouths of

THE SERMONS OF MR. YORICK 223

Buffoons and ludicrous Romancers? "Would any man believe
that a Preacher was in earnest, who should mount the pulpit
in a Harlequin's coat?" Likewise a venerable prelate
remonstrated with Sterne for his unseemly conduct, protest-
ing that "he could not bear to look into sermons wrote by the
king of Denmark's jester". The conversation that ensued,
ending with Yorick's witty retort to the troubled ecclesias-
tic, may be read* in the Sentimental Journey:

"Good my lord! said I; but there are two Yorieks. The
Yorick your lordship thinks of has been dead and buried
eight hundred years ago; he flourish 'd in Horwendillus's

court the other Yorick is myself, who have flourish 'd, my

lord, in no court He shook his head Good God ! said I,

you might as well confound Alexander the Great with

Alexander the Coppersmith, my lord 'Twas all one, he

replied.

" If Alexander king of Macedon could have trans-
lated your lordship, said I, I'm sure your lordship would
not have said so."

Aside from title and preface, the pretty volumes were
greeted with universal praise. Even Griffiths 's man, bitter
though he was at the outset, went through the sermons one
by one in two issues of his magazine; and, carried away by
the preach'er's eloquence, he was ready to avow after the
first volume: "We know of no compositions of this kind in
the English language, that are written with more ease, purity,
and elegance; and tho' there is not much of the pathetic
or devotional to be found in them, yet there are many fine
and delicate touches of the human heart and passions, which,
abstractedly considered, shew marks of great benevolence
and sensibility of mind. If we consider them as moral
Essays, they are, indeed, highly commendable, and equally
calculated for the „ entertainment and instruction of the
attentive Reader." Smollett's man in the Critical Review
for May apprehended that Yorick's name on the title-page
might be an offence to moralists and bigots; but for himself
he beheld with pleasure "this son of Comus descending from
the chair of mirth and frolick, to inspire sentiments of piety,
and read lectures in morality, to that very audience whose

224 LATJEENCE STEENE

hearts he has captivated with good-natured wit, and facetious
humour. Let the narrow-minded bigot persuade himself
that religion consists in a grave forbidding exterior and
austere conversation; let him wear the garb of sorrow, rail
at innocent festivity, and make himself disagreeable to
become righteous ; we, for our parts, will laugh and sing, and
lighten the unavoidable cares of life by every harmless
recreation : we will lay siege to Namur with uncle Toby and
Trim, in the morning, and moralize at night with Sterne and
Torick; in one word, we will ever esteem religion when
smoothed with good humour, and believe that piety alone to
be genuine, which flows from a heart, warm, gay, and social."
The long panegyric was broken by only one discordant note.
The reviewer thought that Sterne had carried his familiar
style, almost uniformly beautiful in its simplicity, to excess
in the famous sermon which opens with a denial of the text.
It was undignified, all must agree, for the preacher to set
his own wisdom against the wisdom of Solomon.

The poet Gray, who understood the jest of the preacher
exactly, enquired of his friend Thomas "Wharton : ' ' Have you
read his sermons (with his own comic figure at the head of
them) ? they are in the style, I think, most proper for the
pulpit, and shew a very strong imagination and a sensible
heart: but you see him often tottering on the verge of
laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of his
audience."* Even some of the Delany-Granville set who
would not take in Shandy, were almost persuaded by the
sermons that they had misjudged the author. "Pray read",
Lady Cowper enjoined Mrs. Dewes, "Yoriek's sermons,
though you would not read Tristram Shandy. They are
more like Essays. I like them extremely, and I think he
must be a good man."t Dr. Johnson was among the very
few who were never quite won over. ,On a visit to Lich-
field, an old friend placed a volume of the sermons in his
hand for an opinion. Johnson asked him whether he ever
read any others. "Yes, Doctor", replied his friend, "I read
Sherlock, Tillotson, Beveridge, and others." "Ay, Sir",

* Letter to Wharton, July, 1760.

t Autobiography and Correspondence, first series, III, 593.

THE SERMONS OF ME. YORICK 225

retorted Johnson, "there you drink the cup of Salvation to
the bottom; here you have merely the froth from the sur-
face." At another time Johnson nevertheless admitted that
he had read Yorick's sermons while travelling _ in a stage
coach ; but he added ' ' I should not have even deigned to look
at them had I been at large. ' '*

For some reason the notion has prevailed that Yorick's
sermons were never really delivered; that they are only
a bastard literary form, east in a homiletic mould for the sake
of publication. Sterne, however, made an explicit statement
to the contrary. "Not one of them", said his preface, "was
composed with any thoughts of being printed." Their pub-
lication, as I have remarked once before, was clearly an
afterthought — a late device, as it were, on Sterne's part
for averaging himself up with the public, and, I may add
now, for laying a further tax upon the nobility and gentry
of the realm. Besides his two parishes, Sterne had held for
twenty years a prebend in York Cathedral. Twice every
year — on the sixth Sunday in Lent and the nineteenth Sun-
day after Trinity — he drove in from Sutton to take his turns
at the minster, and at various other times to supply the places
of his brethren, especially of his friend Dean Fountayne,
who, according to the usual arrangements, was appointed to
preach the sermon for All Saints. The young prebendary,
eager for preferment, liked this work, for it kept him before
the public — and put every year twenty guineas into his
purse. By 1760, he seems to have had by him thirty-odd
sermons, carefully written out and laid aside, most of which
had been prepared for the cathedral pulpit, and two of them
for unusual occasions. From this convenient repertory were
selected without doubt the fifteen that went into print.

In making up the volumes for the press, some caution
was needed on Sterne's part, due to his habit of drawing
freely from the great preachers of the past. His chief model,
despite Dr. Johnson's contrast between them, was Archbishop
Tillotson, whom Sterne had read at the university and kept
by him ever since. Next to Tillotson was Dr. Edward Young,
Dean of Sarum and father of the poet, whose sermons were

* Johnsonian Miscellanies, II, 429.
15

226 LAUBENCE STERNE

likewise a Cambridge book. Near them lay also, in Sterne's
estimation, Dr. Joseph Hall, the unfortunate Bishop of Nor-
wich back in the reign of Charles the Second, whose Decades
and Contemplations could be easily expanded into sermons.
Besides these three, there rested on Sterne's shelf several
other divines who were occasionally taken down and placed
on his desk during the process of composition. Prom any
one of them he might work out a sermon acceptable to his
congregation, repeating and amplifying the original as much
as he liked. But the issue under his own name of patch-
works or paraphrases was a thing to be avoided.

For his future guidance it was the custom of the imagi-
nary Yorick, says Mr. Tristram Shandy, "on the first leaf
of every sermon which he composed, to chronicle down the
time, the place, and the occasion of its being preached: to
this, he was ever wont to add some short comment or stric-
ture upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its
credit: — For instance, This sermon upon the Jewish dis-
pensation 1 don't like it at all; Though I own there

is a world of WATEK-LANDISH knowledge in it, but

'tis all tritical, and most tritically put together. This is

but a flimsy kind of a composition; what was in my head
when I made it?

"N.B. The excellency of this text is, that it will suit any

sermon, and of this sermon, that it will suit any

text.

" For this sermon I shall be hanged, for I have

stolen the greatest part of it. Doctor Paidagunes found me

out. SSg^Set a thief to catch a thief. "

This was also Sterne's custom as attested by Isaac Reed,
the editor of Shakespeare, who saw the manuscript of two
of Sterne's sermons and copied out the whimsical remarks
sprawled across them. At the end of one bearing the title
"Our Conversation in Heaven" was the endorsement: "Made
for All Saints and preach 'd on that Day 1750 for the Dean.

Present: one Bellows Blower, three Singing Men, one

Vicar and one Residentiary. Memorandum: Dined with

Duke Humphrey." At the end of the other, entitled "The
Ways of Providence Justified to Man", Sterne wrote: "I

THE SEEMONS OF ME. YOEICK 227

have borrowed most of the Eeflections upon the Characters
from Wollaston, or at least have enlarged from his hints,
though the Sermon is truly mine such as it is."* And to the
comment on the first of the two, the preacher might have
added that the text and much else had been taken from
Tillotson on "The Happiness of a Heavenly Conversation".

These two sermons Sterne cast aside for the present ; but
it was difficult for him to find fifteen which showed no traces
of his borrowings. "Job's Account of the Shortness and
Troubles of Life" went in with the original memorandum
printed as a footnote: "N.B. Most of these reflections upon
the Miseries of Life are taken from Wollaston", that is, from
the widely read Religion of Nature. "Evil Speaking",
though mainly a restatement of Tillotson "Against Evil
Speaking", passed muster after a casual reference to the
witty archbishop. "Joseph's History" acknowledged a
paraphrase from Steele's Christian Hero, but forgot Hall's
"Contemplation on Joseph" out of which the sermon had been
elaborated. It likewise seems to have slipped the preacher's
mind that the charity sermon on "Elijah and the Widow of
Zarephath" contained literal repetitions from Hall's "Elijah
at Sarepta". To cover these and all other cases where notes
or memory failed him, Sterne regarded as sufficient the gen-
eral apology of his preface. It was of course not necessary
for him to inform the public that the sermon on "Self-
Knowledge" was merely a dilution of the one on "The
Abuses of Conscience", which everybody had read in
Shandy; for when a man has once said a good thing, there
can be no harm in his repeating it. Doctor Paidagunes
could find no fault with an author for doing that.

Quite as interesting as what Sterne said or omitted to say
about the old divines who collaborated, as it were, with him
on his sermons, are his notes on time and place of delivery.
"The Case of Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath" was

* These remarks were copied by Eeed into a volume containing
Sterne's first two sermons, published at York in 1747 and 1750 respect*
ively. The volume is now owned by Mr. W. A. White of New York
City. The sermon on Penances, now in the library of J. Pierpont Mor-
gan, Esq., has the following memorandum at the end: "Preached April
8th, 1750. Present: Dr. Herring, Dr. Wanly, Mr. Berdmore."

228 LAURENCE STERNE

delivered, as we remember, at St. Miehael-le-Belfrey before
the charity schools of York on Good Friday, 1747, and pub-
lished soon after. "Very few" read, said a new advertise-
ment, this eloquent sermon, which the author placed among
the best. "The Character of Herod", a footnote explained,
was preached on Innocents' Day, presumably in the minster
for the Dean of York. "The Pharisee and Publican in the
Temple" was, in like manner, assigned to Lent, when the
preacher came in to take his turn as Prebendary of North
Newbald. To the same season belongs also, as the footnote
again expressly declares, "The House of Feasting and the
House of Mourning", one of Sterne's most brilliant studies
in contrast. Many have believed that this sermon at least,
whatever may be said of the rest, could never have been
delivered. But the evidence all points to the contrary. It
is almost a certainty that Sterne, rising into the cathedral
pulpit on his Sunday in Lent, near the close of his residence
at Sutton, and reading from Ecclesiastes, proceeded forth-
with to attack the truth of his text with the startling phrase
"That I deny". Except that it may be "fruitful in virtue",
declared the preacher in conclusion, "Sorrow * * * has no

use but to shorten a man's days nor can gravity, with all

its studied solemnity of look and carriage, serve any end but
to make one half of the world merry, and impose upon the
other".

Other notable sermons, like the one on happiness or its
companion on philanthropy, were included without a note;
perhaps because Sterne looked upon them as wholly his own
and as suitable for any day in the church calendar. But if
we had the full secret of these and the rest, we should doubt-
less find that they were published practically as they had
been written at sundry times for his cathedral congregation.
This is not to say that he did not make many minor changes
in them as they were going through the press, adding or
dropping out words, phrases, and clauses here and there to
the advantage of his style. Such was his method, as we may
see by comparing the three printed versions which we have
of the sermon on conscience. "That I deny", it may be,
was an afterthought in place of a more general repudiation

THE SERMONS OE . Mfi. YOEICK 229

of Solomon. But that Sterne's revision of his sermons for
Dodsley went beyond details is really impossible. Had he
wished it, there was no time for rewriting them during the
months he was in London marching from one great house
to another.

Taking Sterne 's first sermons as they stand, with all their
faults and with all their commonplaces repeated out of
Tillotson and others, they fully deserved the applause that
attended their publication. Some of them could not have
been very effective as spoken discourses. At times, we know,
Sterne failed utterly as a preacher. When it was his turn
to preach in the minster, "half of the Congregation", says
John Croft, "usually went out of the Church as soon as he
mounted the Pulpit, as his Delivery and Voice were so very
disagreeable". This we can well understand in the case of
the more perfunctory sermons wherein the preacher made no
effort to keep his congregation awake. But it was not always
so. On special occasions, when he brought to bear upon his
theme all the resources of an eloquent rhetoric, he filled
church or cathedral and ' ' gave great content to every hearer ' '.
According to a story which Sterne himself is reported to
have related to a company of fellow clergymen, he was
addressed one Sunday, as he was descending from the cathe-
dral pulpit, by a poor widow sitting on the steps. She
enquired of him where she might have the honour of hearing
him preach on the next Sunday. After she had followed
him about to his great discomfort for a succession of Sundays
from one church to another, always taking the same position
on the steps of the pulpit and always asking the same ques-
tion, he finally chose as his text, modifying Holy Writ, the
words: "I will grant the request of this poor widow, lest
by continual coming she weary me." "Why, Sterne",
immediately retorted one of the company, "you omitted the

most applicable part of the passage, which is, Though I

neither fear God nor regard man." "The unexpected re-
tort", it was added, "silenced the wit for the whole
evening. ' '*

* Rev. John Adams, Elegant Anecdotes and Bon Mots, 267-268 (Lon-
don, 1790).

230 LAURENCE STERNE

Uneven as they are for the pulpit, most of Sterne's ser-
mons are admirable for the closet. In one of their aspects,
they were correctly described by contemporary reviewers as
brief moral essays, any one of which may be easily read in
fifteen minutes, or an entire volume at a sitting. After it is
all over, a reader lays aside the book in a gentle frame of
mind, having been soothed for two hours by a quiet and
not too insistent optimism. He has been disturbed by noth-
ing doctrinal, by no undue religious fervour, and by little
religious cant — that jargon of the pulpit compounded of ill-
understood and ill-related Biblical metaphors. If a passage
becomes dull now and then, it is succeeded by a gay thrust
at the Church of Rome, a flash of humour, or an apt quota-
tion from Shakespeare, Epicurus, or Plutarch. Walter
Bagehot, unfortunately one of the last, I suppose, to look
through Sterne's' sermons, was disappointed to find that
"there is not much of heaven and hell" in them. "Auguste
Comte", he went on to say, "might have admitted most of
these sermons ; they are healthy statements of earthly truths,
but they would be just as true if there was no religion at
all; * * * if the 'valuable illusion' of a deity were omitted
from the belief of mankind."* What the astute critic said
is somewhere near the truth; and the statement is to their
favour, though it was not meant to be so. Sterne could have
given no offence to the deists of his age. In fact, he asso-
ciated with them and prepared — as will be duly related — one
sermon especially for a famous group of them. He preached
a sort of common-sense philosophy, which, if it had little to
do with Christian dogmas, never contradicted them. The
evil and disorder in the world was as apparent to him as to
the philosophers; he yet believed implicitly in the essential
goodness of human nature and in the wise and just ways of
Providence. The author of Yorick's sermons, said Lady
Cowper, must be after all a good man; certainly a good
man, if he followed his own instruction.

Apart from their excellent morality, Sterne aptly called
his sermons "dramatic". Very likely he had in mind to
some extent the breaks and pauses of the preacher and his
•Bagehot, Literary Studies, II, 111 (London, 1879).

THE SEBMONS OF ME. YGSICK 231

direct addresses to Solomon, to St. Paul, or to God Himself
in the course of the delivery ; with all of whom he professed
to disagree, though in the end he would come to the con-
clusion that the Scriptures, if properly interpreted, were
probably in the right. But Sterne was more than an actor.
His best sermons are embryonic dramas, in which an effort
is made to visualise scene and character, as though he were
writing for the stage. Everywhere a lively imagination is
at work on the Biblical narrative. If the preacher wishes
to vindicate human nature against the charge of selfishness,
he simply portrays the life of an average man, like scores
in his congregation, from boyhood through youth, and
through manhood on to old age, and lets the proof of his
thesis rest with the portrait. No one who has heard or read
the sermon is disposed to doubt the text that "none of us
liveth to himself". If time and change be the theme, then
again are brought on the imaginary stage the careers of two
men — the one successful and the other unsuccessful, as the
world views them — with a final justification, when the drama
broadens, of God's dealings with His children. Human
nature, the preacher may assert, is so inconstant that we can
never know what a man will do. The statement may be a
commonplace to every one in his congregation ; but the com-
monplace is forgotten in Sterne's illustration of it through
a whole series of portraits drawn with a few strokes from
his own experience and observation. Sometimes a sermon
consists of a single character-sketch rendered in full detail;
it may be Job or Herod. Again, for a study in contrast, two
characters run along parallel to each other, like Nathan and
David, or the Pharisee and the Publican in the Temple.
Scenes of this kind Sterne, avoiding all abstractions, realised
completely and triumphantly. True, the psychology was
crude, but so was all the psychology of the age. Complex
human nature can not be summed up in Pope's neat doctrine
of ruling passions, which was accepted by Sterne. It does
not explain Solomon to call him "a reformed sensualist",
nor Herod to conclude that ambition was the first spring of
his character, which, so to speak, put into motion all the
other wheels. But under Sterne's hand the method resulted

232 LAUEENCE STERNE

in most striking portraits. For setting forth the character
of these and other men in Scripture, Sterne frequently im-
personated them, spoke as he fancied they must have spoken,
giving their points of view, their reasons for their conduct,
in conversation or in monologue. In this dramatic manner
the man of Jericho, for example, soliloquises for a half page
and more after he had been passed by, "friendless and
unpitied", by priest and Levite; and the Samaritan paused
over the unfortunate traveller for a still longer meditation
before deciding to "soften his misfortunes by dropping a
tear of pity over them". Everywhere Sterne thus lets his
imagination play upon the few details furnished him by
Scripture, building up scenes and characters just as Shake-
speare knew how to do from an incident or two out of Holin-
shed. Sometimes, as in "The House of Feasting and the
House of Mourning", a beautiful allegorical veil hangs over
the drama, under which we pass through scenes alternating
with joy and sorrow, depicted with perfect art. This
dramatic discourse is Sterne's most complete allegory of
human life.

Safe to say, no more readable collection of sermons came
from the press of the eighteenth century, and none with a
clearer stamp of literature upon them.

CHAPTER X

SHANDY HALL. TRISTRAM SHANDY:

VOLUMES III AND IV

JUNE 1760— MAT 1761

Taking several sets of sermons along with him for friends
and subscribers in the north, Sterne left London for York —
in his own carriage drawn by his own horses, as we have
seen him — on Monday the twenty-sixth of May. Driving
leisurely, he should have made his smart entry through
Micklegate before nightfall of the following Thursday, in
ample time to appear in the pulpit of St. Peter's on Sunday.
During his absence, his wife and daughter had occupied
lodgings in the Minster Yard. Mrs. Sterne, he found on
returning, had recovered from the delusion that she was the
Queen of Bohemia, despite sore trouble with the daughter
left in her charge. The schoolmates of Lydia, says John
Croft, had plagued and taunted her, since her father's book
came out, with the name of Miss Tristram and Miss Shandy.
In revenge, she wrote love letters to the girls who thus
annoyed her, under the signatures of the several players of
the York company. As she had anticipated, many of the
letters were intercepted by parents and guardians, with the
result that the girls were flogged or shut up in dark
closets or otherwise severely punished. But as she had not
anticipated, the practical joke cast so great a slur on the
theatre, that the players were compelled to take up the mat-
ter and ferret out the person who was playing fast and loose
with their names. The discovery must have thoroughly
humiliated Mrs. Sterne, who was always anxious for the good
report of her daughter. It was, however, a piece of childish
mischief that could not have greatly troubled the author of
Tristram Shandy.

Before moving out to Coxwold, Sterne remained at York

238

234 LAURENCE STERNE

with his wife and daughter for three weeks for business and
recreation. It was incumbent upon him, first of all, to make
provision for the spiritual welfare of the parishes which he
was leaving for higher preferment. In the case of Sutton,
with whose squire he was mostly at variance, he barely fulfilled
his obligations. On coming into York for the previous win-
ter, he had placed over that parish one Marmaduke Collier,
who stayed on at a salary, as subsequently fixed, of £16 a
year and the use of the parsonage house for residence. This
cheap curate, who never attained to the dignity of a license,
held his office solely on a private arrangement with Sterne
as Vicar of Sutton. Much to the vicar's amusement, as
well as to the loss of his library and some furniture, Collier
eventually ran away, after accidentally setting fire to the par-
sonage and burning it to the ground. Stillington, the seat of
Stephen Croft, naturally fared much better. In charge of
this parish was entrusted another Marmaduke — Marmaduke
Callis — who had served as minister in other churches in
the diocese. On Sterne's formal presentation of his name to
the Dean and Chapter of York, Callis received a license to the
curacy — after some delay, to be sure — on September 26, 1761 ;
and Sterne generously agreed to pay him an annual stipend
of £40, or the entire income of the living.*

There was necessary also some readjustment of the mort-
gage on the Tindall farm at Sutton, previously held by Wil-
liam Shaw, who, it would appear, had recently died. For
by lease and release, t dated the second and third days of
June, 1760, Sterne, jointly with John and Timothy Place,
linen drapers of the city of London, who appear in later
records among heirs to William Shaw, conveyed this prop-
erty to Elizabeth Thompson, widow, of Holtby, a neighbour-
ing parish. Though the transaction can not be precisely
cleared up, it was, without much doubt, a transfer of the
Shaw mortgage to Mrs. Thompson. At this time or a little
later, the two dwellings and half of the lands which had been
assigned to Sterne under the Sutton Enclosure Act, were

* The appointments of Callis and Collier are recorded in the Institu-
tions of the Diocese of York.

t Registered at Northallerton.

SHANDY HALL 235

leased to one Benjamin Shepherd, who also, it is likely, was
"the promising tenant" that Sterne found for the Tindall
farm two years before. Several other fields from the same
award were leased to one Robert Mozeen. All this and other
business incident to a change of residence was quickly con-
cluded, and by the middle of June, Sterne had assumed the
duties of his new parish.

Coxwold, where Sterne soon brought his family, lies seven
or eight miles to the north of Stillington on the edge of the
moors. The village straggles up a long and rather steep hill
and loses itself at the top as one travels westward towards
Thirsk, eight miles away. Well up the hill on the left stands
the pretty church of St. Michael, overlooking village and
valley; and beyond the church, on the right, close to the
roadside, is the house which Sterne used for residence and
named Shandy Castle or Shandy Hall. Though now made
over into cottages for labourers, it is still, as in Sterne's time,
a strange-looking gabled structure, as if it were once a
cloister which someone far back turned into a dwelling — low,
rambling, and dark, with a huge irregular stone chimney
buttressing the eastern end. It is the very house, one would
say, with its nooks and corners and surprises, from which
should issue a book like Tristram Shandy. "A sweet retire-
ment", Sterne called it, where a jaded clergyman might take
up his rest. For years he had longed to leave the York
valley, which aggravated his cough and asthma. Now he
had but to step into the garden at the rear of Shandy Hall,
and there lay before him a wide sweep of the Hambleton
Hills. He doubtless missed the intimate society of the
Crofts; but near-by lived the master of the Coxwold gram-
mar school, and within a mile or two was the seat of Lord
Fauconberg, his friend and patron.

Once settled in Shandy Hall, Sterne was ready to proceed
rapidly with his book. The main lines that the story was to
take had been designed the previous year, and several of the
anecdotes, like the birth and the misnaming of the hero,
there are reasons for thinking, may have been then written
out, but afterwards cut away in order to bring the first two
volumes into a compass narrow enough to fit his purse or to

236 LAURENCE STERNE

please Dodsley. But anything from Shandy Hall was now
sure of a market; and Sterne was so eager to lay a new tax
on the public that he sat down to his papers at York before
moving over to Coxwold. The new instalment of Tristram
Shandy was resumed in earnest when he reached his parish;
and we may, if we like, easily obtain a few glimpses of him
at work through the summer and well on into the autumn.
His study, as a visitor enters the narrow hallway of Shandy
Castle, was a small room to the right, from the door of which
one still looks upon the yawning fireplace of the great stone
chimney. By the window stood in Sterne's day a plain deal-
table with pen and inkwell, before which the author, in loose
slippers and old dressing gown, took his seat in a cane chair,
having a back that ran up into ornamental knobs, symbolis-
ing, in Sterne's fancy, wit and discretion. Across the table
and along the chimney-piece were strewn books which he had
brought from his library at Sutton as most useful in compos-
ing the new Shandys. We can still read the titles of some
of them as clearly as if we now saw them. There lay, for
instance, Rabelais in Ozell's translation, Burton's Anatomy,
Locke on the Human Understanding, and the famous Textus
Roffensis, containing the solemn anathemas of the Church
of Eome. Before Sterne had long been at work, books, table,
and floor were spattered with ink, for he was a sloven with his
pen, thrusting it nervously into the inkhorn and then drop-
ping it upon himself or upon the floor on the way to his
paper. The act of composition was to him a sort of obses-
sion, during the strenuous period of which he imagined a
host of quaint demons grinning and clawing at his head
and filling the room, just as we see them in old prints. When
the fit was on, he could write almost continuously through
the day — at will, he used to claim, before meals or after
meals, dressed or undressed, clean shaven or in neglected
beard. But he was unable to smoke while composing and
rarely at other times ; ' ' inasmuch as ' ' — he said in reply to a
conjecture that humour so "refined" as his must be hatched
out by tobacco, — "inasmuch as the fumes thereof do con-
coct my conceits too fast so that they would be all torn to
rags before they could be well served up".* Sometimes, it
* Morgan Manuscripts.

SHANDY HALL 237

is a local tradition, Sterne would issue forth from Shandy
Hall at a great rate, and half way down the hill would come
to a sudden stop, and then rush back to his study to note
down some fancy before it could escape him. And so it went
on for weeks, until his brains became "as dry as a squeezed
orange" and he had "no more conceit in him than a mallet".

Hardly had Sterne set pen to paper this summer, when
there arrived a disconcerting note from Warburton, hinting
at personal and literary indiscretions the past winter and
warning him to be on his guard in the future. The bishop,
not exactly divining Sterne's talent, wished him to compose
a series of trifles, at once playful and moral, such as could
do no harm to their author and might instruct as well as
amuse the reader. On receiving Warburton 's letter, Sterne
felt like throwing aside his manuscripts forever, and falling
back into the humdrum duties of a country parson. But
that was only a momentary impulse. Quickly regaining his
emotional poise, he courteously thanked the bishop for his
"kind and most friendly advice", and added: "Be assured,
my Lord, that willingly and knowingly I will give no offence
to any mortal by anything which I think can look like the
least violation either of decency or good manners, and yet,
with all the caution of a heart void of offence or intention
of giving it, I may find it very hard, in writing such a book
as Tristram Shandy, to mutilate everything in it down to the
prudish humour of every particular. I will, however, do my

best though laugh, my Lord, I will, and as loud as I

can too."

Warburton, elated by the reformation of Sterne, hastened
to reply: "It gives me real pleasure (and I could not but
trouble you with these two or three lines to tell you so) that
you are resolved to do justice to your genius, and to borrow
no aids to support it, but what are of the party of honour,
virtue, and religion. You say you will continue to laugh
aloud. In good time. But one who was no more than even
a man of spirit would choose to laugh in good company;
where priests and virgins may be present. * * * * I would
recommend a maxim to you which Bishop Sherlock formerly
told me Dr. Bentley recommended to him, that a man was

238 LAURENCE STERNE

never writ out the reputation he had once fairly won, but by
himself. ' '

In the end, Sterne had only contempt for the advice with
which Warburton was pestering him, and made a jest of it in
conversation with his friends. No obstacle could stand in
the way of his giving free utterance to what his attendant
demons suggested to him, irrespective of the censures of the
grave. Let his critics say what they might, he would write
for that audience, be it great or small, who could be counted
on to relish genuine humour. "I shall be attacked and
pelted", he wrote to Stephen Croft, "either from cellars or

garrets, write what I will and besides, must expect to

have a party against me of many hundreds who either

do not — or will not laugh. 'Tis enough if I divide the

world; at least I will rest contented with it." With his

mind thus made up, Sterne placed at the head of his manu-
script a Latin sentence which he had seen in Ozell's Rabelais*
from John of Salisbury, the great churchman and humanist
of the twelfth century. "I have no fear", to paraphrase
the Latin as Sterne adroitly modified it to his own purpose,
"I have no fear of the opinions of those unskilled in these
matters; but pray none the less that they spare my lucubra-
tions, in the which it has ever been my aim to run from the
gay to the serious and backwards from the serious to the
gay."

The gay mood was to prevail mostly in the new volumes,
which, among many things, tell of Mr. Walter Shandy's
favourite hypotheses and how his expectations from them
come to naught in the misfortunes that befall his son Tris-
tram immediately after birth. Beginning where he had left
off the year before, Sterne resumed the evening conversa-
tions between the two Shandys and Dr. Slop in the back
parlour of the imaginary Shandy Hall, not to be confounded,
as has been done so often, with Sterne's own habitation. In
a bedroom upstairs lay Mrs. Shandy attended by the parish
midwife and Susannah the housemaid. In the kitchen sat a
group of idle servants, listening for the cry of a child from

* Works of Francis Babelais, revised by Ozell, vol. I, p. cxx (London,

XiOl ) t

SHANDY HALL 239

above. For some moments there had been a lull in the con-
versations of the back parlour. Walter Shandy had delivered
a formal speech on the dangers that threaten a child's head
at birth, and my uncle Toby was whistling Lillabullero in
amazement at the alarming narrative, when a tramping was
heard overhead near the bedside of Mrs. Shandy. Dr. Slop
hurriedly took up his "green bays bag" containing his instru-
ments of torture, but found alas! that Obadiah had tied its
mouth in a dozen hard knots for the safety of its precious
contents. In vain he tried to unloose the intricate "round-
abouts" and "cross turns" which Obadiah had drawn with
all the might of his hands and teeth; and then calling in
desperation for a penknife to cut them, he thereby cut also
his thumb to the bone. Whereupon he began "stamping,
cursing and damning at Obadiah at a dreadful rate". My
uncle Toby, who had not the heart to curse the devil himself
with so much bitterness, suspended his whistling, and Mr.
Shandy rebuked the profane doctor for unduly wasting his
strength and soul's health by heavy cursing over small
accidents. Instead of being so profane on trivial occasions,
it would be much better, Mr. Shandy tried to persuade him,
for a man who must curse to heed the example of a gentle-
man of his acquaintance, "who, in distrust of his own dis-
cretion, * * * sat down and composed (that is at his leisure)
forms of swearing suitable to all cases, from the lowest to
the highest provocation that could happen to him, * * *
and kept them ever by him on the chimney-piece, within
his reach ready for use". Dr. Slop, who had never heard
of the ingenious gentleman, became so interested in the
anecdote that Mr. Shandy offered to show him a similar
document, on condition that he should read it aloud before
going upstairs. The doctor readily agreeing, Mr. Shandy
forthwith reached up to the chimney-piece and gravely
handed the Popish physician an authentic copy of the
form of excommunication prepared for the English clergy
by Ernulf, a learned Roman Bishop of Rochester in the old
days. With wry face over an aching thumb tied up in the
corner of his handkerchief, Dr. Slop was compelled to read
through the terrible anathema, to the full discovery that it

240 LATJEENCE STERNE

was not necessary to go outside his own church for an art
and a gradation in cursing such as he had never dreamed of.
Set beside the old bishop's copious profanity, the most vio-
lent oaths hitherto at his command, he was made to see, were
tame and insipid, unworthy of the fine of five shillings which
the government would inflict upon a gentleman for each
petty offence.

His vocabulary of cursing enriched out of Ernulf's
digest, Dr. Slop received an urgent summons above stairs
from the frightened midwife; and the two Shandys, growing
weary over a discourse on time and eternity, fell asleep as
they sat in their easy armchairs by the fire. The two tired
brothers would have slept on through the night, had they not
been awakened by the creak of a rusty door-hinge, announc-
ing the entrance of Trim to inform them that Dr. Slop had
come down to the kitchen to make a pasteboard bridge for
poor Tristram's broken nose. "With a deep and agonising
sigh, the grief -stricken father staggered to his feet, extending
a hand, as he did so, to my uncle Toby, who led him silently
to his bed, where he might best digest his affliction, as
everybody knows, by lying flat upon his face, with an arm
and leg dangling upon the floor. To understand, says
Sterne, why the sad mishap to Tristram caused so great grief
in his father, it must be explained that the elder Shandy
had staked all on his son's nose. It had long been a settled
conviction of his that a long nose, besides being a useful
ornament to the face, was also a forecast of character and
distinction in life; while a short or flat nose, like the ace of
clubs that disfigured the countenance of his great-grand-
father, meant as surely misfortunes and disgraces against
which no man could ever bear up, whatever might be his
other endowments of body or mind.

Mr. Shandy had derived his whimsical notion from wide
observation on the rise and fall of the best county families
and from a multitude of curious treatises that touched upon
the theme. But the one that had been of most profit to him
was a learned folio by the German Slawkenbergius, who
devoted his life to the philosophy of the nose. Unlike all
the other books, this one contained merry tales — a hundred

SHANDY HALL 241

of them — written out in the purest Latin, to illustrate and
enforce the scholar's doctrine in its hundred-fold divisions.
Of the two or three tales that Mr. Shandy always read with
much delight, Sterne relates one that hinges upon the dis-
order and confusion caused among the inhabitants of Strass-
burg by the appearance one summer evening of a stranger
who entered their gates, riding upon a mule and guarding with
a drawn scimitar an immense nose which he had obtained
(so he told the sentinel) at the Promontory of Noses. For
some time, says Sterne, there had been no great and vital
question in dispute between the Roman Catholic and
Protestant universities at Strassburg, but now one of the
finest was thrown at their heads. Taking sides, logicians
and theologians proved and disproved through long and
acrimonious debate, each faculty using its own appropriate
jargon, that the stranger's nose was a real nose, that it was
only a pasteboard nose, and that it was no nose at all, as if
the affair were of as great moment as the altercation which
divided the universities over the point in Martin Luther's
damnation — whether the founder of Protestantism was damned
to all eternity by the conjunction of the planets at his birth,
and whether, the affirmative being proven, "his doctrines by
direct corollary must be damned doctrines too". Slawken-
bergius and his merry folio were, of course, pure fictions
elaborated by Sterne for puzzling his learned public. The
fanciful allegory of a land where one may purchase noses
after his heart, was built up by Sterne mostly from a few
hints out of Ozell's Rabelais, which lay at his elbow.*

The long digression on Slawkenbergius gave Mr. Shandy
time to recover his grief in sufficient measure to converse and
use his reason once more. No sooner had he reached that
stage than he fell back upon another hypothesis whose aid
might be yet invoked to save his son, disfigured and dis-
graced as he was by Dr. Slop's obstetric hand. For next to
a man's nose, the squire held, with the old writers on his
shelves, that a man's character and conduct all depend upon
the name he happens to bear. Judas, do what he might,
could have been only the traitor that he was; whereas Caesar

* See "the fair of noses" in Ozell's Balelaig, I, 317.
16

242 LAURENCE STERNE

and Alexander conquered the world quite as much by the
magic of their names as by their valour. Jack, Dick, and
Tom, "like equal forces acting against each other in con-
trary directions", he also often affirmed, were neutral or
indifferent names, numbering since the world began as many
knaves and fools as wise and good men. It had been his
intention to call his son George or Edward, which though
not the best names, stood rather high in his estimation as the
titles of kings and princes. But to offset the broken nose,
it was now necessary to choose the most potent name in his
repertory, else his son would grow into a driveller and goose-
cap. And so he resolved to christen him after Trismegistus,
"the greatest of all earthly beings", whether considered as
king, lawyer, philosopher, or priest, for he was all of them
and more too.

But wisest fate said no. In the depth of night, while
Mr. Shandy lay quietly sleeping, he was awakened by
Susannah, who had come to tell him that his son was in con-
vulsions near to the point of death, that Parson Yorick could
nowhere be found to baptise him, but that his curate was
already in the dressing-room, holding the child upon his
arm, black as the ace of spades, and waiting for the name.

"Trismegistus", said Mr. Shandy, and Susannah ran
along the gallery with the name to her mistress's room.

' ' 'Tis Tris something, cried Susannah There is

no christian-name in the world, said the curate, beginning

with Tris but Tristram. Then 'tis Tristram-gistus,

quoth Susannah.

" There is no gistus to it noodle! 'tis my own

name, replied the curate, dipping his hand, as he spoke, into

the bason Tristram! said he, &c. &c. &c. &c, so Tristram

was I called, and Tristram shall I be to the day of my
death."

"Of all names in the universe", Mr. Shandy "had the
most unconquerable aversion for Tristram." It is a name,
he would say, so low and contemptible that it "could possibly
produce nothing in rerum natura but what was extremely
mean and pitiful". Who, he used to ask (ignorant of the
Tristram of romance), ever read or heard tell of "a man

SHANDY HALL 243

called Tristram, performing anything great or worth record-
ing? No. * * * The thing is impossible". The next morning
Mr. Shandy, as he was making tea with my uncle Toby,
heard how Susannah and the curate lost Trismegistus between
them ; took down his hat from the peg, end walked away to
meditate alone upon the final stroke of fortune.

There was, however, still one ray of hope, which Yorick,
who was summoned for his advice, pointed out to the dis-
consolate father. Perhaps Tristram's name might be
changed. At any rate they would all — Mr. Yorick and the
two Shandys — attend the next Visitation Dinner at York
and lay the matter before the eminent advocates and divines
learned in ecclesiastical law. The dinner threatened to
break up in hubbub before coming to the question at all;
for by some accident a hot chestnut was dropped or poked
into the breeches of Phutatorius, who accused Yorick of
maliciously placing it there. The riot over the chestnut,
however, soon subsided ; and Didius, the great church-lawyer,
brought forward Tristram's baptism for discussion. Mr.
Shandy sat and listened to various amusing baptismal stories,
learning, in the course of the evening, what made a baptism
null and what made it valid in the period before the Eeforma-
tion, and that in special cases, like the Duchess of Suffolk's,
it had been adjudged by the highest courts that the mother
may not be of kin to her child. The company at length
broke up without determining the cause presented to them.
Still, Mr. Shandy felt paid for his visit to the dinner, for
never before had his brain been so tickled by the subtleties
of dialectic wit.

After the York dinner, the narrative quickly terminated
with an account of the squire's project for enclosing the
great Ox-moor, followed by the timely death of his eldest son
Bobby, making Tristram thereby heir-apparent to the Shandy
family. The new instalment of Tristram Shandy had many
correspondences with the performance of the previous year.
In both were the same or similar freaks of structure and
style. As before, real and fictitious documents were intro-
duced so cleverly that it was hard for the reader to determine
the character of the one or the other. Latin and English

244 LAURENCE STERNE

stared at each other on opposite pages, as in Pope's Imita-
tions of Horace. In the fourth volume a chapter was dropped
out and the pagination tampered with. The preface was
again thrust in as an intermediate chapter; and a marbled
page, which should* have been the ornamental lining to a
cover, was transferred to the body of the book, as an emblem
of its motley character. Local satire and allusion still
abounded, though it has now become extremely difficult to
uncover most of it. Philip Har land's experiments in farm-
ing were gently ridiculed in Mr. Shandy's trouble with the
Ox-moor; and from first to last Dr. Burton was crucified to
the delight of his enemies. The Visitation Dinner was clearly
a reminiscence of that turbulent dinner of the York chapter
back in 1751 at George Woodhouse's, when Sterne and the
Dean of York confronted Dr. .Topham of the prerogative
court and silenced him. Doubtless the portraits of several
officials and clergymen present on that occasion were once
recognisable under the Kabelaisian names that Sterne gave
them, like Agelastes, who never laughed at a joke, and
Somnolentus, who always slept through one. Dr. Topham
surely appeared as Didius and shifted into Phutatorius
before the dinner was over; and the hot chestnut which
Yorick picked up from the floor after it had traversed the
breeches of Phutatorius, not as an insult, but because he
thought "a good chestnut worth stooping for", was a ludi-
crous version of the old controversy over the commissaryship
which Dr. Topham first resigned all right to, and afterwards
claimed as his own when Sterne was willing to take it. And
finally, the story of Tristram's christening may well have
been a rendering of a local anecdote over the blunders of
curates and sponsors at baptisms, with which the armory
of clerical jest had long been filled. Perhaps something like

it had occurred in one of Sterne's own parishes. "Name

this child", once said a clergyman at the critical point in a
baptism. "Zulphur", responded the godfather. "That",
said the clergyman, "is not a name." "Sulphur Sul-
phur" was the only result of another trial to get at the

name, and the priest smiled. "He means Zilpah, Leah's

SHANDY HALL 245

handmaid," suggested the clerk, and the child escaped a
worse fate than Tristram's.*

It was Sterne's own opinion that the new volumes sur-
passed the old "in laughable humour", while they contained
"an equal degree of Cervantic satire". And he was right,
except that his inspiration was not Cervantes so much as
Rabelais. His genius was yet to develop in other ways, but
in satire he had now reached high water. Never since
Rabelais had "the lumber rooms of learning" been so
thoroughly overhauled and the learned blockheads dragged
out and subjected to so keen a ridicule as in the wordy con-
troversies over the stranger's nose and the points that nullify
or make valid a baptism. It may be that some of the satire
was misplaced and out of date; but, speaking generally, the
. old scholastic method of warfare still survived in philosophy
and religion. Mr. Shandy was certainly not the last logician
to employ the hypothesis as if it carried with it a sort of
magic potency. Nor were the Shandy brothers the last men
who, while invariably associating different ideas with the
same words, have attempted to converse arid reason together.
Coming nearer home, Sterne waylaid and pommelled deli-
ciously the connoisseurs in art and criticism; one of whom
measured the angles of Tristram Shandy with rule and com-
pass, and pronounced it out of all plumb ; and another timed
Garrick's pauses in Hamlet's soliloquy, without observing the
actor's wonderful manner of bridging chasms with eye, atti-
tude, and gesture, for he could not look away from the stop-
watch in his hand, he said, if he was to count seconds and
their fractions. The gentlemen on the Monthly Review and
other magazines who had belaboured Sterne for publishing
sermons under the name of Mr. Torick, were singled out for
good-natured ridicule. They rumpled, cut, and slashed at
Yorick's jerkin unmercifully, he told them; but they did not
reach the sarcenet lining, and he still remained unharmed.
And as he laid aside his pen, he drank a health to the big-
wigs and long-beards who had admitted Yorick's wit but
lamented his lack of discretion, asking them to relax a little
from their gravity and try him once more. "True Shcm-
* P. H. Ditchfield, The Parish Cleric, 268 (London, 1907).

246 LAURENCE STERNE

deism'', he assured them, "think what you will against it,
opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which
partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital
fluids of the body to run freely through its channels, makes
the wheel of life run long and chearfully round."

The third volume of Tristram Shandy was completed on
the third day of August, and the fourth in November, after
George the Third had begun his "propitious reign". Leav-
ing his parish in charge of an assistant curate, Sterne went
up to London alone the week before Christmas to watch his
book through the press, which in advance of his coming had
been advertised by Dodsley through the autumn in order to
hedge off the spurious Shandys which were threatening the
market. For following Sterne this winter, we have hardly
more than four letters to Stephen Croft relative to business
with which the squire from time to time entrusted him.
Sterne had several pictures copied for his friend, and pur-
chased two prints for him, which, after being lent to Miss
Gilbert, daughter of the Archbishop of York, who was south
with her father, were duly posted to Stillington Hall. He
also sounded the war-office several times on the chance of
promotion for Mr. Croft's son Stephen, who held a commis-
sion in the army. Fortunately, Sterne could not write on
business without writing about himself and his book ; so that
much may be read in and out of these letters, if we can
interpret the allusions and will heed the silences.

On reaching London, Sterne was in high spirits and at
once plunged into society with the old zest. Much as last
year, he could write after a month of it: "I never dined at

home once since I arrived am fourteen dinners deep

engaged just now, and fear matters will be worse with me in
that point than better." But beyond the dinners, no two
London seasons were ever, alike for Sterne. Old friends and
old enemies were absent from town or they no longer regarded
him, and new ones appeared to applaud or to abuse him.
This year he was struck by the great changes that had taken
place in "the looks and political reasoning" of the coffee-
houses and all the companies he attended. The nation, he
found to his surprise, was divided over the German war (as

SHANDY HALL 247

it was called) into two hostile camps, which he humorously
called "Prussians and Anti-Prussjans, Butes and Anti-
Butes", breaking up the old distinction between Whig and
Tory. The winter before it was nothing but Pitt, and none
dared question the conduct of the great war-minister. In
the meantime the war in Germany had gone disastrously;
the loss of life in the field had been terrible; Prince Ferdi-
nand, the hero of a year ago, was calling for forty thousand
more men, and for provisions, else his army would starve in
a fortnight; officers who should have been with their regi-
ments were loitering about St. James's Coffee-House and
Hyde Park; corruption was rampant, and loud complaints
were heard of Pitt's "making a trade of the war". George
the Second had died in October, and everybody was talking
about the boy who had succeeded him. Sterne, like all the
rest, closely watched the youth's habits and his policy of
peace as it unfolded during the winter. It was a novel sight
for him to see on the throne a young man of energy, deter-
mined to be a king after the type set forth by Lord Boling-
broke in his Patriot King. "The King seems resolved",
Sterne wrote to his friends at Stillington, ' ' to bring all things
back to their original principles, and to stop the torrent of
corruption and laziness. * * * The present system being to
remove that phalanx of great people, which stood betwixt
the throne and the subjects, and suffer them to have im-
mediate access without the intervention of a cabal (this

is the language of others) : however, the King gives every-
thing himself, knows everything, and weighs everything

maturely, and then is inflexible this puts old stagers off

their game how it will end we are all in the dark. ' '

An admirer of Pitt, Sterne had come to London as a
Prussian, but he could not hold out against the strong senti-
ment towards peace and a king who was fast winning the
hearts of his people by granting them free access to the
palace, and by appearing among them at the theatre and
elsewhere. Sterne on one occasion sat in the gallery of the
House of Commons through an entire day, waiting for the
appearance of Pitt to throw down the gauntlet in defence of
the German war; but "a political fit of the gout seized the

248 LAURENCE STERNE

great combatant and he entered not the lists". Instead of
the expected speech, Sterne listened to a long and passionate
debate, which began and ended with incoherent abuse of all
who were crying for peace. A month later, he recorded the
break-up of the ministry and the humiliation of Pitt, though
his fall was not yet. "The court is turning topsy-turvy",

he wrote to Croft, "Lord Bute, le premier Lord Talbot,

to be groom of the chambers in room of the Duke of Rutland

Lord Halifax to Ireland Sir Francis Dashwood in

Talbot's place Pitt seems unmoved a peace inevitable

Stocks rise the peers this moment kissing hands, &c.

&c. (this week may be christened the kiss-hands week) for
a hundred changes will happen in consequence of these.
* * * Pray, when you have read this, send the news to
Mrs. Sterne."

Just as the peers were kissing hands, an odd rumour was
set going by Sterne's enemies at York that George the Third
had forbidden him the Court. He wrote back that Charles
Townshend and other friends were very merry over the report,
and assured him that he need fear "no accident of that
kind". He continued to attend, we may be sure, the king's
levees, and in February he was invited to the "grand assem-
bly" of Lady Northumberland, soon to be appointed to her
Majesty's bedchamber. The only place where Sterne was not
a welcome guest seems to have been the house of Warburton
in Grosvenor Square. The bishop professed to have heard
from Garrick and Berenger certain stories about "our
heteroclite parson" that disabled him from appearing
longer "as his friend and well-wisher".* With many of
the king's favourites who entered the new ministry or were
seen most about the Court, Sterne claimed acquaintance, and
with some of them he was in easy social relations. Charles
Townshend 's appointment as Secretary of War he announced
to Stephen Croft a month in advance. If he lost War-
burton, he gained in his place John, Viscount Spencer, one of
the new peers. This most agreeable nobleman sent him a sil-

* See Warburton 's letters to Garrick dated June 16 and June 26,
1760, in Private Correspondence of David Garrick, 117-18 (London,
1831).

SHANDY HALL 249

ver standish, invited him to Wimbleton, and in all ways
befriended him as a patron should. It was a close friend-
ship that continued to the end. Lord Spencer, however, was
not a man to exert any restraint upon Sterne's conduct;
while Warburton, humbug as he was, did care for the con-
ventions of the cloth and tried to keep Sterne within their
bounds.

"Warburton 's influence gone, Sterne soon drifted with
the tide of fashion and social dissipation. In running through
the list of the king's friends, one is amazed to find there,
John Wilkes excepted, the leading Monks of the disbanded
Medmenham Abbey and other men whose lives were equally
notorious. Sir Francis Dashwood, treasurer of the Cham-
bers, and subsequently Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the
founder of the profligate order; and a former member,
George Bubb Dodington, who still kept up a semblance of
the brotherhood at his Hammersmith villa, was created Baron
Melcombe of Melcombe Regis. Sterne made the acquaint-
ance of Wilkes the year before, and now fell in with his
compeers. One morning he breakfasted with Robert Van-
sittart, recorder of Monmouth, — the Monk who brought to
the abbey the baboon to which Sir Francis was wont to
administer the eucharist. Sterne's name was also associated
by John Croft with a pair of wits of the same general
stamp — Samuel Foote, the clever actor and playright, and
Francis Drake Delaval, an' amateur actor, then a member of
Parliament for Andover. Foote, who had just produced the
Minor at the Haymarket, was at the height of his popularity,
and Delaval was soon to be created a Knight of the Bath.
About the two men, who were inseparable, many scandalous
stories were in circulation. With no danger of break in
their friendship, Delaval married Foote 's mistress. Ten
years after Sterne first knew them, Delaval was found one
morning dead on the floor of his room, with an empty bottle
of usquebaugh lying by his side. "It is therefore supposed",
said the newspapers naively in recording the sudden death,
"that he had got up in the night to get something to drink".
His body being opened by the physicians, "his stomach
appeared in a very inflamed state". No doubt it would have

250 LAUEENCE STERNE

been better for Sterne and some aspects of his art, had he
never known and associated with these men or their like;
but it is just, as well as charitable, to suppose that he was
drawn to them, not by their immorality, in which there is
no evidence of his sharing, but by their extraordinary wit
and good fellowship — qualities which attracted even Dr.
Johnson to Vansittart. They were the fine gentlemen of the
period.

Amid the earlier engagements of the season, Sterne had
the proofs of his book to revise in the morning. It was his
custom to make minor changes at the last moment, "prick-
ing in the lights", so to speak, in modern phrase. This year
there was some question about Slawkenbergius on noses,
which, a reader will observe, is so placed that it could be cut
out with a little readjustment of the text before or after the
tale. Stephen Croft, who had acted as Sterne's adviser
during the period of composition, objected to Slawken-
bergius, probably on the ground that as a story it ran upon
an equivocation too long drawn out to pass muster. Twice
he remonstrated with Sterne by letter after the author had
reached London. From Sterne's first reply, it seems quite
likely that he met his friend's objection by shifting the
emphasis of the episode from equivocation to a satire on
misplaced and futile learning. Be this as it may, Sterne
had decided to let Slawkenbergius stand, for his friends in
London had read the manuscript and approved. In high
spirits he then wrote to Stephen Croft: "As to the main

points in view, at which you hint all I can say is, that

I see my way, and unless Old Nick throws the dice shall,

in due time, come off the winner, Tristram will be out

the twentieth there is a great rout made about him before

he enters the stage whether this will be of use or no, I

can't say some wits of the first magnitude here, both as

to wit and station, engage me success time will shew."

Heralded by wits and coffee-houses, the second instalment
of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,
comprising the third and fourth volumes of the work, issued
from Dodsley's press — a week later than the author had
expected — on Wednesday the twenty-eighth of January,

SHANDY HALL 251

1761, in company with a new edition of the first two volumes.
It contained, as if to frighten away over-violent criticism,
compliments to Reynolds as an easy and graceful painter,
and to "my dear friend Garrick, whom I have so much cause
to esteem and honour". Pitt was alluded to in the "states-
man turning the political wheel * * * against the stream
of corruption"; and Mr. Shandy spoke of the glory and
honour surrounding the names of the young king and the
Duke of York, of whom the latter had noticed Sterne the
preceding May. On the other hand, Warburton was dealt
a covert thrust in the reference to a bishop who complained
of being splashed by Torick's horse. Hogarth and Ravenet
his engraver were again called in for a frontispiece, repre-
senting the scene in Mrs. Shandy's dressing-room the moment
after Yorick's curate had christened Tristram by the wrong
name. The London Magazine, then the semi-official organ
of the ministry, very properly inserted a congratulatory note
in its January issue, saying: "At length the real, the in-
imitable Shandy, again makes his appearance, and all the
host of impotent criticks and imitators look agast, at his
superior genius. "Whoever of our readers have, with true
relish read his former volumes, may be assured that their
perusal of the third and fourth will not be attended with
less delight."

But Sterne's friends among the great availed not with
the professional critics, or with a large section of the public.
Horace Walpole, writing to a Yorkshire parson early in
March, observed by the way: "The second and third vol-
umes of Tristram Shandy, the dregs of nonsense, have uni-
versally met the contempt they deserve: genius may be
exhausted; — ^1 see that folly's invention may be so too."*
Outside the London Magazine, the author and his book were
everywhere denounced in print. The Monthly Review, for
example, in its March number, apologised for all that it had
ever said in favour of the first volumes, and then proceeded
to read Sterne a lecture on the proprieties and the art of
writing one's self out. The publication of a book like Tris-
tram Shandy, Sterne was told, might be only venial in a

* Letters, edited by Toynbee, V, 32.

252 LAUBENCE STEENE

Foote, who professed to write nothing but farces, but no act
could be more reprehensible in a dignitary of the Church.
"Do for shame, Mr. Shandy, hide your jerkin, or, at least,
send the lining to the scowerer's." "But your Indiscretion,
good Mr. Tristram", to go on with the address to Sterne,
"is not all we complain of in the volumes now before us.
"We must tax you with what you will dread above the most
terrible of all imputations — nothing less than Dullness.
Yes, indeed, Mr. Tristram, you are dull, very dull. Your
jaded Fancy seems to have been exhausted by two pigmy
octavos, which scarce contained the substance of a twelve-
penny pamphlet. * * * Your characters are no longer strik-
ing and singular. We are sick of your uncle Toby's wound
in his groin ; we have had enough of his ravelines and breast-
works: in short, we are quite tired with his hobby horses;
and we can no longer bear with Corporal Trim's insipidity."
Nothing in the book entertained the reviewer, except Ernulf 's
"extraordinary anathema", which Sterne had probably
purloined, it was charged, from some old newspaper or
magazine.

The Critical Review for April, though in the main milder
in tone and appreciative here and there, likewise read Sterne
a philosophical essay on the different kinds of humour, down
to the bastard forms he was practising in imitation of
Eabelais. Like his brother on the Monthly Review, this
critic claimed that Sterne had lost his audience, but he
explained it differently. There was really, in his view, no
marked difference between Sterne's two performances. "One
had merit", he said, "but was extolled above its value; the
other has defects, but is too severely decried." Slawken-
lergius's Tale, for instance, shows that Mr. Sterne can write
Latin "with elegance and propriety", and in other places he
displays "taste and erudition". The trouble has really
been with the public, it was the reviewer's opinion, who,
having once gorged itself with Tristram Shandy, could stand
no more without "nausea and indigestion". "All novel
readers", to quote him exactly, "from the stale maiden of
quality to the snuff-taking chambermaid, devoured the first
part with a most voracious swallow, and rejected the last

SHANDY HALL 253

with marks of loathing and aversion. We must not look
for the reason of this difference in the medicine, but in the
patient to which it was administered."

These outrageous attacks no one will take over-seriously,
for their animus is too apparent for that. The offence that
the reviewers took at the immoralities of Tristram Shandy
was mere humbug, for their own magazines and newspapers
spoke at times a more vulgar language than Sterne's at its
worst. Sterne had chastised the reviewers because they cen-
sured him for publishing sermons under the name of Yorick,
the king's jester; and they were but repaying him in the
same kind. There was not much more in it than this. If
they had hitherto only rumpled his jerkin, they would show
him that they could, when they wished, slash the lining.
Sterne, as usual, professed indifference to them at first. Just
as the storm was breaking over his head, he wrote to Stephen
Croft: "One half of the town abuse my book as bitterly, as

the other half cry it up to the skies the best is, they

abuse and buy it, and at such a rate, that we are going on
with a second edition, as fast as possible." But when the
storm rose to its fury, Sterne became excited also. "If my
enemies knew", he then wrote again to Croft, "that by this
rage of abuse and ill-will, they were effectually serving the
interests both of myself, and works, they would be more

quiet but it has been the fate of my betters, who have

found, that the way to fame, is like the way to heaven

through much tribulation and till I shall have the honour

to be as much maltreated as Rabelais and Swift were, I must
continue humble ; for I have not filled up the measure of half
their persecutions."

For many readers Sterne's wit had no doubt lost its
freshness, but so far as one can see, there was no immediate
decline, as his enemies would have it, in the sale of Shandy,
of which the second edition appeared on the twenty-first of
May. Sterne was still the vogue as much as ever, only in a
different set. ' "Where I had one friend", he said, "last,
year to do me honour, I have three now." And every new
friend, it is implied, meant a new reader. In March his
fine portrait by Reynolds was placed on public exhibition by

254 LATJKENCE STEENE

the Society of Artists. As last year, the garreteers accom-
panied his progress with books and pamphlets, of which the
most pretentious was The Life and Opinions of Bertram
Montfichet, a faithful and humble copy of Sterne's first
instalment down to the Greek motto, paper, print, size and
number of volumes, with an uncle Dick for my uncle Toby.
The author of Explanatory Remarks upon Tristram Shandy
found an audience for a second part in continuation; and
another wit outdid Sterne's oddities by publishing A Book
without a Title-page. Tristram Shandy also gave his name
to a new country-dance, to a soup and a salad which could
be had at the coffee-houses, and to a game of cards ' ' in which
the knave of hearts, if hearts are trumps, is supreme, and
nothing can resist his power".

From the jests of scribblers, the transition is most abrupt
to the last sight we get of Sterne in London for this year.
Lloyd's Evening Post for Monday the fourth of May con-
tained the following news-item:

"Yesterday morning a charity sermon was preached at
the Chapel, belonging to the Foundling Hospital for the
support of the children maintained and educated in the said
hospital, by the Rev. Mr. Sterne, to a numerous audience,
several of whom were persons of distinction, and a handsome
collection was made for the further support of that charity."

This was Sterne's first and only appearance in a London
pulpit. The Foundling Hospital, situated in Guilford street,
was then a fashionable charity numbering among its numer-
ous patrons many of the nobility. Peers, it is said, had stood
as godfathers to deserted children in the Chapel of St.
Andrew's where Sterne officiated; Handel had frequently
performed there, and on the walls hung portraits and other
paintings by Hogarth, Reynolds, and their contemporaries,
as gifts to the foundation. For several years the hospital
had been scandalously mismanaged, and the last Parliament
had revised its charter. It was a tribute to Sterne's popu-
larity, if nothing more, for the new board of governors to
turn to him as a preacher who would attract a large and
generous congregation. It so happened that the new treas-
urer, George "Whatley — known in America for his association

SHANDY HALL 255

and correspondence with Franklin — was acquainted with
Yorick; and to him accordingly fell the duty of inviting
"Dr. Sterne", as he was sometimes called, to take the annual
charity sermon. After repeated promises, Sterne fixed the
Sunday in a characteristic note, dated March 25, 1761, which
he sent over to Whatley's lodgings in Lothbury:

"On April the fifth, 1751, and sure as the day comes,

and as sure as the Foundling Hospital stands, will I

(that is, in case I stand myself) discharge my conscience of
my promise in giving you, not a half hour (not a poor half
hour), for I never could preach so long without fatiguing

both myself and my flock to death but I will give you a

short sermon, and flap you in my turn: — preaching (you
must know) is a theologic flap upon the heart, as the dunning

for a promise is a political flap upon the memory: -both

the one and the other is useless where men have wit enough
to be honest. This makes for my hypothesis of wit and
judgment. I believe you to have both in a great degree,
and therefore I am, with great esteem and truth, your's,

"Laurence Sterne.

"P.S. I will take care to be walking under some colon-
nade, in or about the Hospital, about a quarter before
eleven."*

But Sterne did not tread the round of the hospital
colonnades on that Sunday morning in April, owing either
to ill health or to social engagements. It took still another
month to bring him up to the sticking-point ; and then he
appeared on the first Sunday of May, his coming announced
by the newspapers. The politicians, wits, and men of fashion
with whom Sterne had intimately associated for four months,
one may be certain, came to see how the author of Tristram
Shandy would conduct himself in his clerical gown. Yorick
took for his theme the parable of the Kich Man and Lazarus,
on the text "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither
will they be persuaded, though one should rise from the
dead". It was a sermon of attitudes, pauses, and para-

* This letter, from the original in possession of J. T. Eudd, was
published in the Monthly Bepository of Theology and General Literature
for August, 1806. In the issue for the preceding March, Eudd gave an
account of George Whatley.

256 LAURENCE STERNE

doxes, which must have amused here and there his friends
looking for Shandean eccentricity. The preacher put an
imaginary speech into the mouth of a messenger from heaven
calling upon his hearers to part with the vices that bring
only death and misery to their doors, and addressed the
Almighty directly on the distinctions between the rich and
the poor, asking Him what they all meant, and then answer-
ing the question himself in the assurance that each man's
case shall sometime be reconsidered by a just God, as the Rich
Man of the parable found out to his pain. By the way
Sterne admonished his "dear auditers" against "the treach-
ery of the senses", and exhorted them "to be temperate and
chaste, and just and peaceable, and charitable and kind
to one another". At times the orator rose to a degree of
pathetic eloquence, as in his appeal for alms "in behalf of
those who know not how to ask it for themselves". In
closing, his voice became husky; and his audience should
have wept in response to his final invitation for tears.

It was not a great sermon; indeed it hardly equalled the
one Sterne preached before the charity schools of York in
the days of his obscurity ; but it was in a measure successful.
The treasurer of the hospital reported to the managers a
contribution amounting to fifty-five pounds, nine shillings,
and two pence.*

* The minutes of the Foundling Hospital contain two entries with
reference to the sermon. On Wednesday, April 29, it was ordered:

"That a paragraph be inserted in the Daily Papers that a Charity
Sermon will be preached in the Chapel of this Hospital on Sunday
next by the Revd. Mr. Sterne."

The paragraph appeared in the Public Advertiser of Saturday, May 2.

On Wednesday, May 6, the entry reads:

"The Treasurer reported that the Collection at the Anthem in the
Chapel last Sunday, amounted to £55. 9. 2."

CHAPTER XI

SHANDY HALL CONTINUED
TRISTRAM SHANDY: VOLUMES V AND VI

JUNE 1761— JANUAEY 1762

It was well on in June before Sterne took his seat in the
coach for York. On the road between Stilton and Stamford,
he got a fright, if we are to interpret Shandy literally, at the
reckless driving of the postillion down a three-mile slope;
and, thrusting his head out of the window, he vowed to "the
great Ood of day" that he would lock up his study door the
moment he reached home and throw the key into his draw-
well at the back of Shandy Hall. Merely stopping at York,
he hurried on to his family at Coxwold. During the first
weeks after his arrival he was, in contrast with the summer
before, ill at ease in his parish. "The transition from rapid
motion to absolute rest", he complained in a letter to Hall-
Stevenson, then in London, "was too violent. 1 should have

walked about the streets of York ten days, as a proper medium

to have passed through, before I entered upon my rest. 1

staid but a moment, and I have been here but a few, to satisfy
me I have not managed my miseries like a wise man." The
weather, too, was "cold and churlish" on the moors, as if it
were "bleak December". His wife, piqued perhaps, as she
had right to be, at his long absence, received him coolly,
declaring herself happier without him. "0 Lord!" he cried
out half -seriously in his desolation, "0 Lord! now are you
going to Ranelagh to-night, and I am sitting, sorrowful as
the prophet was, when the voice cried out to him and said,

'What dost thou here, Elijah?' 'Tis well the spirit does

not make the same at Coxwould for unless for the few

sheep left me to take care of, in this wilderness, I might as
well, nay better, be at Mecca."

The mood of discontent, not quite genuine, quickly passed.

17 257

258 LAURENCE STERNE

Husband and wife came to an understanding, and Sterne
resumed his parish duties with unwonted zeal, preaching, I
take it, regularly every Sunday. This year or the preceding,
the parson received, it used to be said at Coxwold, a summons
to the death-bed of a poor widow on the outskirts of his
parish; and after administering to her the last sacrament, he
enquired what she intended to leave him in her will for his
trouble. "Alas! Sir", answered the distressed woman, "I
am too wretched to give a legacy even to my own relations."
"That excuse", replied Yorick, "shall not serve me. I insist
upon inheriting your two children, and, in grateful return
for the bequest, I will take such care of them that they shall
feel as little as possible the loss of an affectionate and worthy
mother." "The expiring parent", concludes the anecdote,
"at once comforted and surprised, assented; and Sterne
religiously kept his promise." Whether the incident be true
or not, it is interesting to get this traditional view of Sterne's
kindness to his parishioners.* Sometime during the sum-
mer, he drew up a plan for re-seating his church, in the man-
ner of a cathedral, that there might be "better sound" and
"better light". The plan was submitted to Richard Chapman,
the steward of Newburgh Priory, who sent it, with detailed
comments, to Lord Fauconberg, then in London, for approval
or disapproval. On the day of the king's coronation, the
twenty-second of September, Sterne entertained his entire
parish and all the country-side. The story of it was told by
Mr. Chapman in his letter to the Earl of Fauconberg under
date of September the twenty-fifth:

"I am extremely obliged to your lordship for the corona-
tion news, and am glad your lordship got excused from
attending, which might have been of bad consequence. Here
a fine ox with his horns gilt was roasted whole in the middle
of the town, after which the bells put in for church, where an
excellent sermon was delivered extempory on the occasion by
Mr. Sterne, and gave great content to every hearer. The
church was quite full, both quire and aisle, to the very door.
The text, &c, you will see both in the London and York
papers. About three o'clock the ox was cut up and dis-

* Yorkshire Notes and Queries, June, 1904.

SHANDY HALL CONTINUED 259

tributed amongst at least three thousand people, after which
two barrels of ale was distributed amongst those that could
get nearest to 'em. Ringing of bells, squibs and crackers,
tar-barrels and bonfires, &c, and a ball in the evening, con-
cluded the joyful day."*

Sterne paid for the ox and perhaps for the ale out of his
own pocket. His extemporary sermon, which had been care-
fully written out, dealt historically with the Church in Eng-
land under Divine Providence, from the time God sent the
Romans into Britain to open a pathway for the Gospel, and
"then put his hook into their nostrils and led these wild
beasts of prey back again into their own land ' ', down through
the dark days of Popery to the Reformation, and on to the
final deliverance of the kingdom from "the arts of Jesuitry"
in the reign just ended. In conclusion the preacher exhorted
his hearers to be loyal to King George the Third, and to live
pure and sinless lives, that "the great and mighty God"
might never have reason for withdrawing his mercies from
the chosen people.

Earlier in the summer there had been some delay in
beginning Shandy again. In July Sterne bought "seven
hundred books at a purchase dog cheap", in consequence of
which his study was topsy-turvy for a week before he could
get them set up. He seems to have been thinking, too, of
further preferment in the Church, for he wrote a clerum,
or the Latin sermon preliminary to the degree of Doctor of
Divinity ; but he went no further, owing, it may be surmised,
to the death in August of the Archbishop of York. Dr. Gil-
bert, and his daughter, who, it is said, really ruled the diocese,
were both most friendly to Sterne. The new archbishop,
Robert Hays Drummond, who was translated from Salisbury,
also proved to be well disposed to him, but the election was
not yet, and the favour of the new archbishop could not yet
be counted on. Once started, Sterne went on with Shandy
with more than his usual pace. On the tenth of August he
arrived at the story of Tristram's accident; by the first of
September he was already in the fifth book ; and by the close

* Beport on Manuscripts in Various Collections * * * presented to
Parliament by Command of Ms Majesty, II, 188-89 (London, 1903).

260 LAUEENCE STEENE

of October he may have been at the end. For nearly three
months he worked steadily, amid the quiet of domestic scenes
such as were never to return to him at Shandy Hall. Just
as the conclusion was in sight, he wrote to a friend who had
sent him belated congratulations on his appointment to Cox-
wold by the Earl of Fauconberg: "My new habitation * * *
is within a mile of his Lordship 's seat and park. Tis a very

agreeable ride out in the chaise I purchased for my wife.

Lyd has a pony which she delights in. Whilst they take

these diversions, I am scribbling away at my Tristram.

These two volumes are, I think, the best. 1 shall write as

long as I live, 'tis, in fact, my hobby-horse ; and so much am
I delighted with my uncle Toby's imaginary character, that

I am become an enthusiast. My Lydia helps to copy for

me and my wife knits, and listens as I read her chapters. ' '

At the outset of his work, Sterne was uncertain, any
reader may see, as to the course his story was to run.
Rabelais still rested at his elbow for hints, and Burton's
Anatomy, I fear, lay wide open in front of him. Belying
too much upon them and other books to awaken his fancy,
he did not start out well in his first chapter, which opened
with a riddle and closed with direct appropriations from
Burton on "the relicks of learning" and on man as "the
miracle of nature". The fragment on whiskers, which fol-
lowed, was an elaborate double entendre, likewise pieced out
of Burton, with the aid of the article on Margaret of Valois
in Bayle's Dictionary, perhaps one of his seven hundred new
books from London. The episode was skilfully stitched
together, to be sure; but it was after all only a double
entendre, without the brilliant satirical colouring of the
chapter on noses, which it was intended to duplicate. From
the old conversations in the parlour of Shandy Hall, Dr.
Slop dropped out, except as he waddled through on his way
to bind up Tristram's wound and to quarrel with Susannah.
With Dr. Slop gone and Yorick put into his place, the butt
of Sterne's satire went also. In consequence of this, the
narrative moved on heavily for some pages through Mr.
Shandy's philosophical lament over the death of Bobby,
which came straight out of Burton. Matters began to mend,

SHANDY HALL CONTINUED 261

however, when Sterne reached the story of Tristram's acci-
dent in the sashed window, which is one of Sterne's best
anecdotes of that kind. All of Mr. Shandy's carefully laid
plans for his son's physical welfare having now miscarried,
through successive blunders of physician, curate, and house-
maid, nothing remained for him but to try a new system of
education upon Tristram, in the hope of making a prodigy
of him. To this end he wrote a Tristra-paedia in rivalry
with Xenophon's Cyropaedia, descriptive of the training which
Cyrus the Great was supposed to pass through to the rule of
the East. Forgetting his books at this point, Sterne passed
in review, with excellent ridicule, a young man's career at
school and university, as exemplified in his own experience,
out to the theory that a short cut to knowledge — a Northwest
Passage, so to speak, — might be opened through skilful prac-
tice in manipulating the auxiliary verbs. That scheme for
the quick multiplication of ideas pleased Corporal Trim and
my uncle Toby also, for some of the bravest men, they said,
that they had ever fought by the side of in the Low Coun-
tries, were auxiliaries.

Still, in spite of many good things, Sterne knew instinc-
tively that he could not continue longer on the oddities of
Mr. Shandy, and escape the danger of writing himself out, as
his critics intimated that he had done already. He therefore
passed to the kitchen of Shandy Hall and over to my uncle
Toby's bowling green for a set of characters not yet so far
exhausted. Sterne's wit was always whimsical, but he never
rendered the supreme charm and delicacy possible to the
whim until he placed my uncle Toby before his toy fortifica-
tions on the bowling green, gazette in hand, giving Corporal
Trim directions for attacking and winning the last town that
Marlborough had entered in triumph. "When the chamade
was beat, and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and fol-
lowed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the

ramparts Heaven! Earth! Sea! but what avails

apostrophes ? with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never

compounded so intoxicating a draught."

Sterne had employed gesture, too, in the delineation of
character, beyond the skill of most humourists; but he never

262 LAURENCE STEKNE

attained to the full scope and meaning of it until he let the
corporal discourse on life and death, standing amid a motley
group in the kitchen, who had just heard that Master Bohby
would never return from his travels :

" 'Are we not here now,' continued the corporal, (striking
the end of his stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to

give an idea of health and stability) * * * * 'and are we

not' (dropping his hat plumb upon the ground — and

pausing, before he pronounced the word) 'gone! in a

moment?' The descent of the hat was as if a heavy lump

of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it. Nothing

could have expressed the sentiment of mortality, of which it

was the type and fore-runner, like it, his hand seemed to

vanish from under it, it fell dead, the corporal's eye

fixed upon it, as upon a corps, and Susannah burst into

a flood of tears."

Sterne was a sentimentalist, readers of this memoir need
hardly be told, from the time he took hartshorn to bear up
against the absence of Miss Lumley; but outside of some of
his sermons, his pathos had been kept well in abeyance except
for an occasional passage, like my uncle Toby's fly or the
death of poor Yorick. He was now reworking the old vein
and refining it to pure gold. No humour could be gentler
and more winning than Trim's catechism, or my uncle Toby's
lament over the Peace of Utrecht, or the story of Le Fever, a
poor lieutenant, like Sterne's own father, who fell ill on the
route to join his regiment in Flanders and lay near death at
the village inn. My uncle Toby, though Le Fever was a
stranger to him, felt so keenly for the distress of a brother
officer that he could not sleep o 'nights or bear for a moment
the thought of his dying. One evening, as Trim was putting
his master to bed, he told him that it was all over with the
poor soul, who would never march again, but must surely die.
"He will march; said my uncle Toby, rising up from the side
of the bed, with one shoe off : * * * marching the foot which

had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch, he shall

march to his regiment. * * * He shall not die, by G ,

cried my uncle Toby."

"The Accusing Spirit", Sterne commented famously,

SHANDY HALL CONTINUED 263

"which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blush 'd

as he gave it in ; and the Recording Angel, as he wrote

it down, dropp'd a tear upon the word, and blotted it out
for ever."

The better part of these volumes was thus written under
the clear and full inspiration of Sterne's genius. "Ask my
pen", he says, why I write these details about Le Fever and

my uncle Toby, "it governs me 1 govern not it".

True, he has been accused of stealing my uncle Toby's oath,
but I can not run down the theft, and think some mistake
has been made about it. Certain parallels or analogies to it
lie imbedded in the so-called exempla of mediaeval divines
and moralists, but the search leads no further. Richard
Rolle of Hampole, a hermit and author of the fourteenth
century, for example, tells the story of a canon who was to
be damned, it was supposed, because of imperfect repentance.
A scholar wrote down his sins and gave the record of them
to the abbot, who found them all blotted out, and the parch-
ment as white and clean as if ink had never denied it.
Sterne's idea lay in this and other exempla, some of which
he had met with in his reading; but the beauty, the charm,
and the humour of it, he alone knew how to render grandly.

In the quiet and chastened humour that ruled Sterne while
sporting with pathos, his old enemies on the reviews es-
caped the usual long tirades. They were nevertheless not
quite forgotten here and there. Sterne likened them, in
beginning his sixth book, to a line of uncurried and forlorn
jackasses, who viewed and reviewed him as he was passing
over the rivulet of a little valley; "and when we climbed
over that hill, and were just getting out of sight — —good
God! what a braying did they all set up together !" For the
benefit of those who complained that they could not follow
him through his digressions, he plotted the curves of his
narrative, writing his own name beneath as the engraver.
And for the moralists who feared contamination, he printed
rows of stars in place of suppressed passages, and left one
entire page blank, on which they might write what they
pleased, to the end that his book should have at least one page
"which Malice will not blacken, and which Ignorance can-

264 LAURENCE STERNE

not misrepresent". Expressive of his general aim and be-
speaking the indulgence of his public, he placed at the head
of each volume, beneath the usual title, two Latin quotations
(afterward increased to three), one from Horace and one
from Erasmus, taken not from the originals, but as he found
them slightly changed in the Anatomy of Melancholy*
Speaking with Erasmus through Burton, he asked that his
readers distinguish between his character as clergyman and
his role as jester. "If any one", to paraphrase the Latin,
"objects that my book is too light and fantastic for a divine
or too satirical for a Christian, let him remember that 'tis
not I but Democritus who has spoken." While the book was
in making, Sterne sent a draft of the story of Le Fever (as
far as the second paragraph of the thirteenth chapter) to
Lady Spencer, with comments thereon in his own hand, as a
step towards inscribing that part of his work to her Lady-
ship, and the two volumes as a whole to her husband, John,
Lord Viscount Spencer.

In anticipation of Sterne's coming to London to super-
intend the publication of his book, the scribblers, expecting
something of the old order, had been unusually busy. Not
without wit — coarse, it is true — was a shilling pamphlet which
appeared late in October under the title: A Funeral Dis-
course occasioned by the much lamented Death of Mr. Yorick,
Prebendary of Y * * k, * * * preached before a very mixed
Society of Jemmies, Jessamies, Methodists and Christians,
at a Nocturnal Meeting in Petticoat Lane, on a text to be
found in "the first chapter of the Gospel of the Jemmies,
otherwise called the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
at the words: Alas Poor Yorick!" The preacher told his
congregation that the report current that Mr. Sterne was
now living and writing the fifth and sixth volumes of Shandy
was false. It is barely possible, he added in explanation of
his jest, that the animal Sterne may still be alive, but the
spiritual Sterne, all his wit and fancy, died with Slawken-
bergius's Tale and passed into oblivion. The pamphlet was
dedicated to "the Right Honourable, the Lord F g and

* Anatomy of Melancholy, edited by A. R. Shilleto, I, 138 (London,
1903} •

SHANDY HALL CONTINUED 265

the very facetious Mr. Foote". In a footnote it was said
with reference to Sterne's intimacy with Archbishop Gilbert,
then dead a few months: "The late arch-bishop of York,
Dr. G*****tof leaden memory, used to say, that he
was so delighted with the Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy that he read them once every six weeks." At the
heels of Torick's Funeral, came An Admonitory Letter ad-
dressed to the Rev. Mr. 8 , * * * by a Layman, in wild

censure of Mr. Sterne's literary morals; and The Life and
Amours of Hafen Slawkenbergius, purporting to be the tale
which Yorick had half promised in his fourth volume but
had left untold. It was intimated, curiously enough, by the
Critical Review, that Sterne bore a hand in some of these
pamphlets, sending them forth, so to speak, as an advance
guard to herald his approach.

Unaware of what awaited him, Sterne must have come
up to London towards the end of November, a month before
his custom; for the third instalment of Tristram Shandy —
the fifth and sixth volumes — was advertised for Monday,
December 21, 1761, though it bore the date of the new year.
In this interval, while the author was correcting printers'
blunders and improving his style in general, occurred the
only meeting that ever took place between Sterne and Dr.
Johnson. "In a company where I lately was", the lexi- ;
cographer is reported to have said to a group of friends, ;
' ' Tristram Shandy introduced himself ; and Tristram Shandy
had scarcely sat down, when he informed us that he had been
writing a Dedication to Lord Spencer; and sponte sua he
pulled it out of his pocket; and sponte sua, for nobody
desired him, he began to read it ; and before he had read half
a dozen lines, sponte mea, sir, I told him it was not English,
sir."* The scene of the encounter seems to have been the
Old Cheshire Cheese Tavern, where Dr. Johnson was sitting
with Goldsmith or Boswell.t The lexicographer's criticism,
it has been supposed, was heeded; and thus by the irony
of fate Dr. Johnson became, if not an actual corrector, at

* The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Begister, Dec, 1818
(vol. X, p. 389).

\Notes and Queries, tenth series, vol. V, 108.

266 LAURENCE STERNE

least a contributor to the good English of a man whom he
despised. But Sterne, I fancy, let the dedication stand as it
had been written, loose and ungrammatieal as it was in
structure from the Johnsonian point of view, and yet clear
and beautiful to one who reads for the meaning and not to
parse the sentences.

Sterne's early arrival in London was made imperative by
the loss of his publisher. During the summer some misun-
derstanding had arisen between him and Dodsley, the cause
of which one can only conjecture, as no scrap of their cor-
respondence over it is known to be extant. The last instal-
ment of Tristram Shandy, after its first great run was over,
had not sold well, for there had' been no edition since the
one in May. Sterne, in his disappointment, laid the blame,
I take it, upon Dodsley rather than upon the public. Be this
as it may, author and publisher parted company in October,
when Sterne took the unusual course of advertising his fifth
and sixth volumes in the London newspapers without a pub-
lisher's name. Not till well on in December did any of these
announcements bear the name of "T. Becket and P. A.
Dehondt", at the sign of Tully's Head in the Strand,
to whom Sterne transferred his patronage and remained
faithful to the last. The firm, however, did not imme-
diately purchase the copyright. Four thousand sets were
printed at Sterne's expense, and Becket was to sell them on
commission.

Under the new management, the price of the set was
reduced from five to four shillings, and advance copies were
widely distributed to the press without much direct adver-
tising. No great difficulty could have been encountered in
matching exactly Dodsley 's paper and type, so that the new
volumes should present to the eye the same look as the old.
But the change of publisher was attended with one incon-
venience. Every season spurious works in danger of being
thought Sterne's were placed on the market by unscrupulous
booksellers. Last January it was The Life and Opinions of
Bertram Montfichet. Now it was another Slawkenbergius,
which was timed to appear on the same day with Tristram
Shandy, as a sort of supplement to be bound with it. Equally

SHANDY HALL CONTINUED 267

impudent was The Life and Adventures of Christopher
Wagstaffe, Gentleman,— " a lively and facetious imitation
of Mr. Sterne's famous performance", — the hero of which
claimed to be, in allusion to Sterne's plagiarisms from John
Dunton, a grandfather of Tristram Shandy. So long as
Sterne's books carried the imprint of Dodsley, there was no
good reason for anybody's being deceived by the imitators
and forgers; but the case was quite, different when Becket
became his publisher. As a natural, though perhaps not
quite necessary, precaution, Sterne went through the labour
of inscribing his name in each set, usually near the top of
the first page to the right, after the dedication to Lord
Spencer. The signature caused here and there a smile or
jest, for the last author to make use of this device, it
so happened, was "the ingenious Mrs. Constantia Phillips"
of scandalous memory.

Critics and moralists who had been lying in wait to
pounce upon Sterne once more, were' taken aback when they
saw him step forth in a new and unsuspected character.
Some of them, to be sure, who did not read the volumes, fell
into the old abusive tone. A week after their appearance,
Warburton, for example, who could scarcely have seen them,
fired his parting shot at Sterne in a letter from Prior-
Park to his friend Richard Hurd, afterwards Bishop of
Worcester :

"Sterne has published his fifth and sixth Volumes of
Tristram. They are wrote pretty much like the first and
second; but whether they will restore his reputation as a

writer with the publick, is another question. The fellow

himself is an irrecoverable scoundrel."*

No one who read agreed with Warburton. Garrick and
other friends told Sterne that his "thought of the accusing
spirit flying up to heaven's chancery with the oath" was
sublime. The Admonitory Letter to which I have referred
was declared by Sterne's old enemy on the Critical Review
to be "founded on misapprehension". The critic was com-
pelled, as a matter of business, to point out Mr. Sterne's gross

* Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate to one of his Friends, 335
(London, 1809).

268 LAURENCE STERNE

faults and obligations to Rabelais ; but my uncle Toby's oath,
though a conceit, must be pronounced "a conceit of genius".
Even the Monthly Review* so bitter last year and still bitter
enough, found the new instalment superior to all the rest,
and printed entire the death of Le Fever as showing wherein
lay Mr. Sterne's great excellence. Indeed, the story of
Le Fever, it has been said, was copied into all the magazines
and newspapers of the kingdom. Though the statement is
not quite true, it nevertheless circulated very widely in this
way. The London Chronicle set the ball rolling in its issue
of December 19-22, and subsequently gave the passage de-
scribing "Corporal Trim's Manner of Saying his Catechism".
St. James's Chronicle for December 22-24 included quota-
tions from it in an appreciation covering nearly three col-
umns. And so we might go on to the London Magazine and
the Gentleman's Magazine for January, and to other periodi-
cals of the winter which helped to spread Sterne's good fame
farther than it had yet gone.

At this time, Sterne was taken "very ill". He had come
to London, says his dedication to Lord Spencer, in "bad
health", which he attributed to hard writing, combined with
preaching through the summer. The design of going abroad
for a long rest was then in his mind, but he could not quite
see his way to it on account of the expense — unless he could
find a bear to lead round Europe. His serious illness — he
again broke a vessel in his lungs — settled the question for him.
As France and England were still nominally at war, though
the fighting had ended, Sterne could obtain no passport for
his safety. Somewhat concerned, he appealed to Pitt, who
gave him letters to members of the French ministry, behav-
ing, says Sterne, "in every respect to me like a man of good
breeding and good nature". The Archbishop of York "most
humanely" granted him a leave of absence; Garrick lent him
twenty pounds, which was not repaid for several years, if
ever; and towards the end of the second week in January,
Sterne started across the Channel in a race with death. The
first intelligence of him that came back to London was the

* Monthly Review, Feb., 1762; Critical Review, April, 1762.

SHANDY HALL CONTINUED 269

following item in the London Chronicle under date of
February 2-4:

"Private Letters from Paris bring an account of the
death of the Kev. Mr. Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy."

The sad news passed on from one newspaper to another,
with occasional comment, by correspondents. No sooner was
Sterne supposed to be dead than all his faults were forgotten
against him in the vivid impression left by his last beautiful
volumes. An old soldier, for example, signing himself A
Plebeian, who had been captivated by my uncle Toby, sent a
letter to St. James's Chronicle for February 16-18, saying:

"I see there are Letters in Town mentioning the Death

of Mr. S : I hope it is not true; but whether true or

false, it is to be hoped no Man, but one who can boast of a
better Heart and greater Knowledge, will, for the future,
ever employ his pen to sully the Reputation of a Man, who
has given the World the greatest Character that Human
nature can attain to."

Subsequently another Plebeian, who had read his name-
sake's communication, but did not know that the newspaper
had already printed the episode of Le Fever, remonstrated
with the editor in these words:

"I am surprised that you, who are capable of distinguish-
ing what is worthy of the public Notice, should have omitted
thus long the inserting in your Chronicle the affecting Story
of Lieut. Le Fevre, from the last Volume of Tristram
Shandy. As a Friend to Society, as one who feels for the
Woes of another, and knows the Force of Example, I
beseech you to insert it, when you have Room for so long, but
inimitable Performance. Till I saw this Letter, I was not
so great an Admirer of the Author of Tristram Shandy, as to
be displeased to see some of the dirt thrown at him stick to
his Coat; but this Letter has made me a penitent Convert,
believing it impossible, that a Man so capable of painting
the lively Impressions on -his Uncle Toby's Heart, on hear-
ing an affecting Story, can himself wear a heart that is not
made of the best Materials."

A few weeks later, "the report" of Mr. Sterne's death
was announced as "premature"; and a wit discoursed in

270 LAURENCE STERNE

verse upon it in St. James's Chronicle for March 6-9. The
lines, catching the tone and movement of Sir John Suckling's
"What! no more favours? Not a ribbon more?", ran on
fluently :

"How! Shandy dead! (a well-bred Lady cries)
With him each Grace, each social Virtue dies!
No more, alas! shall that instructive Sage
Expose to Light the Follies of the Age ;
No more dear Satire through the Nation reign,

With Shandy fled to Pluto's drear Domain.

# * # # #

Madame your sad Solicitude dispell,

Illustrious Yorick's still alive, and well!

Th' ingenious Writer yet again shall soar,

On Fancy's Wing, to heights unknown before.

The dire Eeport which filled our Minds with Woe,

Was, doubtless, raised by some illiterate Foe."

In the meantime the rumours from Paris had reached
York and Coxwold before any of Sterne's letters to his wife
or to Lord Fauconberg. Whereupon his parishioners, wrote
the steward of Newburgh Priory, all went into mourning out
of respect to his memory.*

* Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, Vol II t> xvii
(London, 1903). ' *"

CHAPTER XII

PARIS

JANUARY— JUNE 1762

Though still alive, Sterne had barely escaped the fate
that was beginning to press upon him. The dread disease of
his youth, which had been held in check since his college
days, had broken out again to his alarm. The last hemor-
rhage left him so weak that, in his way of saying it, his
"spider legs" could no longer support him; his voice was
gone to a whisper, and his face was as pale as a dishclout.
But hope at no time deserted him. "When Death", he said,
addressing his buoyant spirits in memory of the crisis,
"knocked at my door — ye bad him come again; and in so
gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye do it, that he
doubted of his commission." The unwelcome guest, non-
plussed by his reception, turned from Sterne's lodgings, say-
ing as he went in apology for his intrusion, "There must
certainly be some mistake in this matter". "By heaven!"
vowed Sterne, in a hoarse whisper across the table to
Eugenius, as soon as death was gone from his door, "By

heaven! I will lead him a dance he little thinks of for I

will gallop * * * without looking once behind me, to the
banks of the Garonne; and if I hear him clattering at my

heels I'll scamper away to mount Vesuvius." Eugenius,

says Sterne, meaning thereby Hall-Stevenson, who was with

him in London, "led me to my chaise Allons! said I; the

postboy gave a crack with his whip off I went like a

cannon, and in a half dozen bounds got into Dover."

At Dover awaited him a rough mid-winter passage across
the Channel. While the sea chopped about with the wind in
wild sport, Sterne lay in his cabin, "sick, sick, sick", sure
that death had him by the throat this time. He landed at
Calais in the evening, and left early the next morning by

272 LAUBENCE STEENE

post for Paris via Boulogne, Montreuil, Abbeville, Amiens,
and Chantilly. He was too ill on the route to observe much,
though "passing through the finest country", and he seems
to have slept or dozed most of the journey, except when
aroused by some accident to the chaise or by the postboy's
demand for his fare at the successive stages. We should not
forget, however, Janatone, the beautiful daughter of the inn-
keeper at Montreuil, who greeted him as he stepped from his
chaise on a fine evening, and whom he stood watching after
supper, as she sat knitting "a white thread stocking, * * *
long and taper", pinned to her knee, as if to say it was her
own. All the way, save for brief intervals like this, his
imagination was haunted by Death, that "long-striding
scoundrel of a scare-sinner" ever posting at his heels. If
he were to be overtaken, he prayed that the encounter might
take place at some "decent inn", away from the concern of
friends. The inn must have been very bad at Abbeville,
where he lay a night, for he ordered his chaise at four o'clock
the next morning, that he might not meet the scoundrel there,
of all inns in the universe. Thus travelling in haste from
post to post, "a pale man clad in black" was driven into
Paris on the evening of January 16 or 17, 1762, completely
exhausted by the journey. The physicians whom he con-
sulted told him plainly that he "could not live a month".
At best the only hope they were able to hold out to him was
a sojourn in the south of France for the winter. The man
who sent the notice of Sterne's death to the London news-
papers was only anticipating, as every good news-writer
should do, an event certain to occur by the time his letter
reached its destination.

But it was ordered quite otherwise. To the surprise of
his physicians, Sterne mended so rapidly that by the time he
was able to go south they all advised him to stay on in Paris
for the present. His quick recovery he attributed not to
their medicines, but to nature, who was allowed to work her
cure in the clear elastic air of Paris, aided by novel sights
and the attentions of a host of new friends. When first
heard from directly, he formed one of a company of "fifteen
or sixteen English of distinction" living with or near one

PABIS 273

another in the Faubourg St. Germain, a quarter of the city
to which strangers usually resorted. They dined and
supped together, occasionally attended the theatre en masse,
and in smaller groups made excursions in and about the city.
Among these gentlemen was George Macartney, — not yet Sir
George, — "a handsome and dashing young Irishman", who
was to have a long and honourable career as diplomatist and
colonial governor. He had come abroad as companion to
one of Lord Holland's sons — either Stephen Fox or his
younger brother, Charles James Fox, the future statesman.
Both of Lord Holland's sons were mere striplings. Stephen,
known as "the eldest cub of the Fox", was only seventeen
years old; and Charles James, still a student at Eton, was
four years his junior. It is almost incredible that Lord
Holland should have wished to initiate his sons into social
dissipation so early; but such was his premeditated plan,
and Macartney was chosen as his agent. "With Macartney
and "young Mr. Fox" — Stephen most likely — Sterne made
his first visit to Versailles ; and the next morning Macartney
introduced him to Monsieur Titon, an aged patron of art
and literature, to whom Sterne had letters from Garrick.
Mr. Fox took him for a week down the Seine to St. Germain-
en-Laye for change and rest, and often went with him, pay-
ing the entrance fees, I take it, to one of the two theatres.
They usually attended the ComMie Francaise, close at hand,
near the Boulevard St. Germain. The other theatre, the
Comedie Italienne, which had just united with the Opera
Comique, was further away in the Mauconseil quarter. At
the Comedie Francaise, Sterne saw and admired Clairon,
Dumesnil, and Preville.

Preville, whom he saw in Boissy's Le Frangais a Londres,
he declared to be "Mercury himself", so light was he in
appearance and manners. Clairon he thought "extremely
great", especially in Iphigenie; and Dumesnil, "in some
places still greater than her". He was invited to Clairon 's
receptions on Thursday, when the actress "gives to eat (as
they say here) to all that are hungry and dry"; and before
the winter was over he was admitted -to the shrines of all
"the best goddesses" of the theatre. For Garrick 's sake, as

18

274 LAUBENCE STERNE

well as for his own, he interested himself in all things
dramatic, purchasing and sending to his friend comic operas
and pamphlets on the stage, and trying to persuade him to
hring out in London an adaptation of Diderot's Natural Son
which had been made by "a lady of talents". But as time
wore on, the French theatre and all matters pertaining to it
lost their attraction for him. He was bored by the conversa-
tions heard everywhere over the comic opera, then at the
height of fashion, and by passionate disputes over what
should be done with the Jesuits — whether they should be
tolerated or expelled from the kingdom and their property be
confiscated. "0 God!" he cries out in a letter to Garrick,
"they have nothing here, which gives the nerves so smart a

blow, as those great characters in the hands of Garrick !

but I forgot I am writing to the man himself. * * * The
whole city of Paris is bewitch'd with the comic opera, and
if it was not for the affair of the Jesuits, which takes up one

half of our talk, the comic opera would have it all It

is a tragical nuisance in all companies as it is, and was it not
for some sudden starts and dashes — of Shandeism, which
now and then either break the thread, or entangle it so, that
the devil himself would be puzzled in winding it off — I

should die a martyr this by the way I never will."

As to the Comedie Francaise, where they performed
mostly tragedies, Sterne soon grew tired of the long moralis-
ing speeches of the actors, saying he got enough preaching in
his youth. " A tragedy", he tells Garrick, "is to be damn'd

to-night peace be with it, and the gentle brain which

made it!" When he wanted to hear a sermon, he pre-
ferred to go and listen to Pere Clement, preacher to the
King of Poland, whom one of the parishes — St. Roche prob-
ably— had engaged to give "a dozen sermons" through Lent
at a cost of 600 livres. A fine sketch of the dramatic orator
he drew for Mrs. Sterne: "He is King Stanislas's preacher
most excellent indeed! his matter solid, and to the pur-
pose ; his manner, more than theatrical, and greater, both in
his action and delivery, than Madame Clairon, who, you
must know, is the Garrick of the stage here ; he has infinite
variety, and keeps up the attention by it wonderfully; his

PAEIS 275

pulpit, oblong, with three seats in it, into which he occa-
sionally casts himself; goes on, then rises, by a gradation of
four steps, each of which he profits by, as his discourse
inclines him ; in short 'tis a stage, and the variety of his tones
would make you imagine there were no less than five or six
actors on it together."

Always keeping in touch with the English colony and its
amusements, Sterne was drawn, within a fortnight, into the
whirl of French society, where he reigned as the lion of the
hour. It was his first London reception all over again, under
clear Parisian skies. At the moment English newspapers
were announcing his death, he was writing to Garrick in the
elated tone of his letters from London to Miss Pourmantelle
two years before :

"Well! here I am, my friend, as much improved in my
health, for the time, as ever your friendship could wish, or
at least your faith give credit to by the bye I am some-
what worse in my intellectuals ; for my head is turned round
with what I see, and the unexpected honours I have met with
here. Tristram was almost as much known here as in Lon-
don, at least among your men of condition and learning, and
has got me introduced into so many circles ( 'tis comme a
Londres). I have just now a fortnight's dinners and sup-
pers upon my hands — my application to the Count de
Choiseul goes on swimmingly, for not only M. Pelletiere
(who, by the bye, sends ten thousand civilities to you and
Mrs. Garrick) has undertaken my affair, but the Count de

Limbourgh the Baron d'Holbach, has offered any security

for the inoffensiveness of my behaviour in Prance — 'tis

more, you rogue! than you will do This Baron is one of

the most learned noblemen here, the great protector of wits,
and the Scavans who are no wits — keeps open house three
days a week — his house is now, as yours was to me, my

own — he lives at great expence. 'Twas an odd incident

when I was introduced to the Count de Bissie, which I was

at his desire 1 found him reading Tristram this

grandee does me great honours, and gives me leave to go a
private way through his apartments into the Palais Koyal,
to view the Duke of Orleans' collections, every day I have

276 LAURENCE STEENE

time 1 have been at the doctors of Sorbonne 1 hope

in a fortnight to break through, or rather from, the delights
of this place, which, in the sgavoir vivre, exceeds all the
places, I believe, in this section of the globe."

It should not be inferred that everybody in the French
capital was reading Tristram Shandy. New to Paris, Sterne
was yet to learn to make due allowance for French politeness
in the many compliments paid to him as the author of a
"famous book". Tristram was not translated until years
after Sterne's death, and it was never very well understood
in France. Still, the book was already known in a way.
Anglomaniacs here and there certainly had copies, which they
tried to read — Voltaire with most success. For the rest,
dependence was placed upon those French journals devoted
largely to European literature, which did not fail to give
resumes of Tristram, prefaced with anecdotes of the Anglican
clergyman who had written it to the dismay of his clerical
brethren. The attention of literary Paris was first called
to Sterne's book by the Journal Encyclopedique in the num-
ber for April, 1760, issued on the first of May. "C'est ici",
declared the London correspondent, "le monstre d 'Horace.
Des pensees morales, fines, delicates, faillantes, solides, fortes,
impies, hazardees, temeraires; voild ce que Von trouve dans
cet ouvrage. * * * L'Auteur n'a ni plan, ni principes, ni
systeme: il ne veut que parler, et malheureusement on
I'ecoute avec plaisir. La vivacite de son imagination, le
feu de ses portraits, le caractere de ses reflexions, tout plait,
tout interesse et tout seduit." Garrick, it was added, had
given the ecclesiastic the freedom of his theatre and a lord
had presented him with a benefice. The same periodical
also noticed the second instalment of Tristram Shandy in its
issue for May, 1761, saying "Toute le monde convient, apres
avoir lu cette brochure, qu'elle n'a pas le sens commun, et
cependent on se I'arrache des mains; quelle inconsequence!"

Sterne was likewise taken up by Suard, the journalist
and man of letters, in the Gazette Litteraire; and Voltaire,
who was then at Ferney writing his Dictionnaire Philoso-
phique, (1764), quoted from Trim's sermon a passage con-
taining the most subtile analysis within his reading of the

PAEIS 277

insidious ways in which gain and lust may deceive the con-
science. The portraits of Dr. Slop and the two Shandys,
Voltaire thought "superior to the paintings of Eembrandt
and the sketches of Callot"; while the "comic book" as a
whole might be best compared with "those little satires of
antiquity which contained qualities so piquant and fascinat-
ing".* Finally, Voltaire gave Sterne the title by which he
was to be henceforth known in France; he called him, with
Swift in mind, "the second Kabelais of England". The
information about Sterne that accompanied him through the
salons was thus of that vague kind most apt to excite
curiosity to see and converse with the famous author. He
bore withal the credentials of Pitt and Garrick.

Sterne entered Parisian society, his letter to Garrick
would imply, through the salon of Baron d'Holbach, the
Encyclopedist, who became his personal surety until a pass-
port could be obtained from the ministry. D'Holbach, or
the Baron, as his friends addressed him, was a cosmopolitan
of large wealth, most simple and affable in bearing, and
altogether the best type of gentleman under the old regime.
He divided his year between his mansion in the Rue Royal,
the very heart of aristocratic Paris, and Grandval, a beauti-
ful chateau a few miles up the Seine, where he entertained
favourite guests for days and weeks. Because of his hos-
pitality towards all persons of distinction, whether French
or foreign, he was known facetiously as "the host of Europe".
When in Paris, he invited to his table, every Sunday and
every Thursday, a company of philosophers and men of let-
ters, numbering from ten to twenty. A lavish dinner, served
at two o'clock, was prolonged by conversation until the hour
for the theatre. The Baron's salon was aptly called by one
who frequented it "the Institute of France before there was
one"; for at his table were canvassed all questions of science,
art, literature, politics, and religion. It was there, says the
Abbe Morellet, who often dined at d'Holbach 's with Sterne,
that Roux and Darcet explained their theory of the earth;
Marmontel set forth the principles of his Elements of Litera-
ture; and the host expounded his system of dogmatic atheism
* (Ewvres de Voltawe, VII, 369 (Paris, 1876).

278 LAURENCE STEBNE

so clearly and persuasively as to almost win the assent of
men who in their hearts could not accept his theories. On
the. other hand, Horace Walpole found the "Holbachian
club" very dull. "I forgot to tell you", he wrote from
Paris to George Selwyn in 1765, "that I sometimes go to
Baron d'Olbach's; but I have left off his dinners, as there
was no bearing the authors, and philosophers, and savants,
of which he has a pigeon-house full. They soon turned my
head with a new system of antediluvian deluges, which they
have invented to prove the eternity of matter. The Baron
is persuaded that Pall Mall is paved with lava or deluge
stones. In short, nonsense for nonsense, I like the Jesuits
better than the philosophers."* Sterne, too, with his im-
perfect knowledge of French, was at first restless under the
long discourses of the savants, whom he was careful not to
include among the wits; but, we may be certain, he never
betrayed his impatience. He caught the Holbachian manner
and was soon able to discourse in rivalry with the best of the
circle.

At times four great intelligences shone in upon the Hol-
bachian group. With the two greatest of them — Voltaire
and Rousseau, — Sterne had no personal acquaintance; he
may or may not have known the shy d'Alembert; but he
formed an intimate friendship with Diderot, who was then,
like himself, almost a member of the Baron's household. It
was a delightful family as Diderot himself described it in
letters to Mademoiselle Volland. Madame d'Holbach was a
most agreeable woman, douce et honnete, with an aversion
for her husband's and all other philosophy. There were
several pretty children and a sprightly mother-in-law,
Madame d'Aine, who knew and repeated all the current gossip
and scandal. Diderot, when Sterne knew him, was midway
in the Encyclopedic, a work which helped on immensely the
emancipation of France from outworn dogmas and philoso-
phies. Far apart as the two men were in their attitude
towards existing institutions, the one a conservative and the
other an iconoclast, they were nevertheless closely bound by
intellect and temperament. Both were sentimentalists; both
* Letters, edited by Toynbee, VI, 370.

PAKIS 279

admired Locke, though they read the master differently ; and
both, we may say it, easily fell into buffoonery over their
burgundy, to the delight, one may fancy, of old Madame
d'Aine, who matched them jest for jest, while the modest
Madame d'Holbach, "exquisitely dressed", sat and listened
complacently to the wild and reckless warfare. It is a bit
amusing to find the English sentimentalist complaining that
Diderot's Natural Son, as he read it in translation, contained
too much sentiment for his own taste, and so probably for
Garrick's also. In memory of their friendship, the details
of which have mostly slipped into obscurity, Sterne sent over
to Becket for a box of books as a present to Monsieur Diderot.
The box must contain, said the motley memorandum, the six
volumes of Shandy, Chaucer, Locke complete, the drumstick
edition of Colley Cibber, together with Cibber's Apology,
Tillotson's Sermons in small volumes, and "all the Works of
Pope — the neatest and cheapest edition — (therefore I suppose
not Warburton's) ". Poor "Warburton! In return, Diderot
honoured Sterne some years after his death, by imitating and
paraphrasing Shandy in a novel called Jacques le Fataliste.
At d'Holbach 's, Sterne met, in the person of Jean Baptiste
Suard, a young man who played about him as a sort of
Boswell. Suard was born and educated at Besancon — the
birthplace of Victor Hugo, — where his father held the post
of secretary to the university. An incident of Suard 's youth,
as bearing upon his character, is worth telling. A mere boy
just out of the university, he was summoned before the
governor of Besancon as a witness against a companion who,
after fighting a duel with an officer of the garrison, im-
mediately went into hiding to escape punishment. Suard
refused to betray his friend. He was himself consequently
arrested and imprisoned for a period on the island of Sainte-
Marguerite off the coast of Cannes, where, in want of other
books, his time was passed in reading the Bible and Bayle's
Dictionary. After the death of his father, the youth drifted
to Paris, with a view to literature. He was befriended by
Buffon and Madame Geoffrin, and more substantially by
Panckoucke, the well-known publisher, whose gifted daughter
he married. During these years, he learned English and

280 LAURENCE STERNE

acquired a very good knowledge of contemporary English
literature. For a time he was associated with the Abbe
Francois Arnaud on the Journal Etranger; and when
Sterne came to Paris, Suard and his former colleague were
projecting the Gazette Litteraire, a similar periodical under
the auspices of the foreign ministry. At the same time Suard
was also preparing for the press a Supplement aux Lettres
de Clarisse Marlowe. Ten or twelve years later, he was
elected to the Academy, largely through the influence of
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Suard lived on through the
Revolution and the Consulate, translating many English
books, and taking an active part in scientific and literary
societies, especially in the reorganisation of the Institute of
France.

Suard, only twenty-eight years old when he first saw
Sterne, was an impressionable young man, extremely polished
in manner and very facile with his pen. Under the mask of
his excessive politeness, however, was a keen intelligence and
an independent judgment which could assert itself when
necessary, as Madame Geoffrin found when she tried to check
and direct his tastes. Boswell-like, he watched Sterne closely
in and out of the salons, noting the peculiarities of his "comic
figure", his gestures, and the turn of his phrases, whether
English or French; and for minute observation invited him
often to his house, where he was equally welcomed by
Madame Suard. After Sterne had come and gone, Madame
Suard wrote a most just and delicate appreciation of the
Sentimental Journey; while Sterne's "habitual gestures and
words were so engraven in the memory and imagination of
her husband that he could never hear Sterne's name men-
tioned without believing that he really saw him and was
listening to him".

Suard often said that he had never seen a man at all like
Sterne — always courteous to a degree and yet perfectly frank
in his criticism of the French and their ways, always in a
sense the same and yet always at the mercy of momentary
impressions. The Court went into mourning, and Sterne at
once assumed the badge. He came into France with only
a reading knowledge of French; but as soon as Fox and
Macartney left Paris, he took lodgings in a French family,

i J)

PAEI8 281

that he might honour his hosts by speaking their language,
if not accurately, at least fluently. One night the whole fair
of St. Germain — "a town in miniature" — burned to the
ground, and "hundreds of unhappy people", who had lost
their all, were driven from their booths to the streets in tears.
The next morning, Sterne's barber, as he was shaving him,
wept over the terrible misfortune to the poor creatures, and
Sterne wept with him. Stopping one day before the statue
of Henry the Fourth, on the Pont-Neuf , a crowd gathered
about him, attracted by his peculiar movements. Turning
round, Sterne called out: "Why are you all staring at me?
Follow my example, all of you!" And they all fell on their
knees with him before the King of France. A slave, says
Garat, Suard's biographer, would never have rendered,
unbidden, such homage to Henry the Fourth.

On one occasion, Suard asked Sterne to account for his
extraordinary personality — for a temperament really stable
and yet so volatile to all appearance. Sterne, in an unusually
serious mood, readily complied with his friend's request, in a
formal statement, which almost startles by its truth and
relative completeness; for genius, it is supposed, never under-
stands itself, and Sterne has said equivocally elsewhere that
he could give a better account of any other man in the world
than of himself. Whether the self -revelation took place over
the wine at Baron d'Holbach's or when the two men were
alone together, the narrative does not specify. His so-called
originality, declared Sterne, should be attributed "to one of
those delicate organisations in which predominates the sacred
informing principle of the soul, that immortal flame which
nourishes life and devours it at the same time, and which
exalts and varies, in sudden and unexpected ways, all sensa-
tions". This creative faculty, said Sterne, "we call im-
agination or sensibility, according as it expresses itself, under
the pen of a writer, in depicting scenes or in portraying the
passions". But beyond his natural endowment, must be
considered, added Sterne, certain acquired traits affecting
mind and style, which had come from "the daily reading of
the Old and New Testaments, books which were to his liking
as well as necessary to his profession"; and from a prolonged

282 LAURENCE STEENE

study of Locke, "which he had begun in youth and continued
through life". Any one, he told Suard, who was acquainted
with Locke might discover the philosopher's directing hand
"in all his pages, in all his lines, in all his expressions".
In conclusion, he said of Locke's philosophy, which had thus
tempered everywhere his thought and manner of procedure,
in his Sermons as well as in Tristram Shandy: "It is a phil-
osophy which never attempts to explain the miracle of sensa-
tion; but reverently leaving that miracle in the hands of
God, it unfolds all the secrets of the mind ; and shunning the
errors to which other theories of knowledge are exposed, it
arrives at all truths accessible to the understanding."
Finally, it is "a sacred philosophy, without which the world
will never have a true universal religion, a true science of
morals, nor will man without it ever attain to real command
over nature".*

Sterne's singular and piquant personality, together with
his bonhomie, made him a welcome visitor everywhere. He
edified philosophers by his clear and enthusiastic exposition
of Locke; he entertained wits by his jests and droll stories;
and awakened, says Suard 's biographer, "new emotions in
tender hearts by his naive and touching sensibility". Among
these tender hearts, may we include Suard 's friends, Madame
Geoffrin and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, whose salons
ranked first for intellectual brilliancy? We may, I think,
and must. True, Sterne nowhere mentions these fascinating
women, but for that matter he nowhere mentions his Boswell.
A few years later, when the Sentimental Journey came out,
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse wrote two short pieces in Sterne's
style, one of which recites a signal act of charity on the part
of Madame Geoffrin. Sterne is represented as listening to
the pathetic tale and as being so overcome by it that he
"clasped Madame Geoffrin in his arms and embraced her
with ecstacy".t

As in this imaginary scene, Sterne always let his emo-
tions run forward while he scampered on after them, whither-

* D. J. Garat, Memoires Sistoriques sur la Vie de M Suard II
147-152 (Paris, 1820). '

f CEuvres Posthumes d'Alembert, II, 22-42 (Paris, 1799); and Garat,
as cited above.

:

PARIS 283

soever they might lead. "I laugh till I cry", he wrote to
Garriek, "and in the same tender moments, cry till I laugh.
I Shandy it more than ever, and verily do believe, that by
mere Shandeism, sublimated by a laughter-loving people, I
fence as much against infirmities, as I do by the benefit of
air and climate." In a similar vein ran a letter to Hall-
Stevenson from his friend Monsieur Tollot, a gentleman of
Geneva and an admirer of Rousseau, then travelling in
France after a nervous breakdown. Falling in with Sterne
at Paris, he was struck by the buoyancy of the pale and sick
Yorick, in contrast with his own miserable temperament, which'
never let him forget his headaches and vertigoes. On a rainy
day in April, when wind and rain were so violent that he was
compelled to stay in and betake himself to divers glasses of
Bordeaux in order to keep off the blue devils, Monsieur Tollot
sat down and wrote to the master of Skelton, saying by the
way: "I sometimes envy", to translate the Genevan's
French, "the happy disposition of our friend Mr. Sterne.
Everything assumes the colour of the rose for that happy
mortal; and what appears to others dark and gloomy, pre-
sents to him only a blithe and merry aspect. His only
pursuit is pleasure; but he is not like most others who know
not how to enjoy pleasure when it is within their grasp ; for
he drinks the bowl to the last drop and still his thirst is
unquenched. ' '*

Perhaps Sterne enjoyed himself most in the society of
Claude de Thiard, the Comte de Bissy, and in the coteries to
which "this grandee" introduced him. The count, then
forty years old, had behind him a conspicuous military
career, in which he reached the rank of lieutenant-general.
In peace he had devoted himself to English studies, trans-
lating Bolingbroke's Patriot King, which gained him admis-
sion to the Academy. Called in from the field, as the Seven
Tears' War was now really over, he was living at Court, with
apartments in the Palais Royal. It was a graceful compli-
ment that he paid Sterne when the humourist first called,
by appointment, for aid in securing a passport from the

* W. Durrant Cooper. Seven Letters written by Sterne and his
Friends, 21-22 (London, printed for private circulation, 1844).

284 LAURENCE STERNE

Due de Choiseul, the prime minister. Tristram Shandy lay
open upon the count's table. Sterne afterward played with
the scene fancifully in the Sentimental Journey, substituting
Hamlet for Shandy. But we may, I think, safely recon-
struct certain parts of the conversation from Sterne's im-
aginative account of it. They talked of Shakespeare and of
Shandy. The count was puzzled by Sterne's assumption of
the name of Yorick, for which he could divine no reason.
Sterne, reading the count's perplexed face, led him on into
the notion that he was really jester to his Majesty George
'the Third, and at length disillusioned him humorously:

"Pardonnez moi, Mons. le Count, said I 1 am not the

king's jester. But you are Yorick? Yes. Et vous

plaisantez? 1 answered, indeed I did jest but was not

paid for it 'twas entirely at my own expence.

"We have no jester at court, Mons. le Count, said I;

the last was in the licentious reign of Charles II. since

which time our manners have been so gradually refining,
that our court at present is so full of patriots, who wish for

nothing but the honours and wealth of their country

and our ladies are all so chaste, so spotless, so good, so
devout there is nothing for a jester to make a jest of

"Voila un persiflage! cried the Count."

The interview was followed by the first of many invita-
tions to dinner. One day the count enquired how he liked
the French, and whether he had found them as urbane as the
world gave them credit of being. Sterne replied that they
were indeed polished "to an excess". His host, noting the
word excesse, asked him to explain frankly what he meant
by the implied criticism. Sterne went on to say adroitly
and politely that courtesy, though in and of itself a com-
mendable virtue, might lead to a loss of "variety and origi-
nality of character". To illustrate his hypothesis, Sterne
took out of his pocket "a few of King William's shillings as
smooth as glass" and proceeded:

"See, Mons. le Count, said I, rising up, and laying them

before him upon the table by jingling and rubbing one

against another for seventy years together in one body's

PARIS 285

pocket or another's, they are become so much alike, you can
scarce distinguish one shilling from another.

"The English, like ancient medals, kept more apart, and
passing but few people's hands, preserve the first sharp-
nesses which the fine hand of Nature has given them they

are not so pleasant to feel but, in return, the legend is so

visible, that at the first look you see whose image and
superscription they bear. But the French, Mons. le Count,
added I (wishing to soften what I had said), have so many

excellencies, they can the better spare this they are a

loyal, a gallant, a generous, an ingenious, and good-temper 'd

people as is under heaven if they have a fault, they are

too serious.

"Mon Dieu! cried the Count, rising out of his chair.

"Mais vous plaisantez, said he, correcting his exclamation.

1 laid my hand upon my breast, and with earnest gravity

assured him it was my most settled opinion."*

Having once mastered the art of courtesy, the humourist
easily outdid the French as he passed through the great
houses to which his friendship with the count recommended
him. Sterne and Choiseul met in one of the fashionable
salons. The duke observing a group about an odd-looking
Englishman and overhearing scraps of the conversation,
turned to a friend and enquired "Who the deuce is that man
over there, that Chevalier Shandy." On being told that it
was the author of the bizarre book which he had heard of
if not read, he stepped up to Monsieur Sterne, and a dialogue
ensued which made Sterne "as vain as a devil". The duke
subsequently signed a passport for Chevalier Sterne, remark-
ing pleasantly, as he handed it to the Comte de Bissy, that
un homme qui rit ne peut etre dcmgereux. In return, Sterne
begged that the prime minister be assured that he had not
come into France to spy out the nakedness of the land.

On being introduced by the Comte de Bissy to the Due de
Biron, Marechal de France, who, says Sterne, had formerly

* The essential truth of this anecdote is confirmed in an article
which appeared in the London Chronicle for April 16-18, 1765, or nearly
two years before the publication of the Sentimental Jowrney. Under the
heading, "Foreign Literature", the newspaper gave an abstract of
Suard on Sterne, from the Gazette Litteraire de I'Ewope.

286 LAURENCE STEENE

"signaliz'd himself by some small feats of chivalry in the
Cour d'amour, and had dress 'd himself out to the idea of
tilts and tournaments ever since", the duke expressed a wish
to cross the Channel to see the English ladies. "Stay where
you are, I beseech you, Mons. le Marquis", broke in Sterne,

forgetting the duke's title, " Les Messrs Anglois can

scarce get a kind look from them as it is." The duke invited
Sterne home to a ten o 'clock supper. In like manner, Sterne
made the acquaintance of La Popeliniere, the richest of the
farmers-general, who, as described in a letter to Mrs. Sterne,
"lives here like a sovereign prince; keeps a company of
musicians always in his house, and a full set of players ; and
gives concerts and plays alternately to the grandees of this
metropolis". Instead of the English ladies, the farmer-
general enquired about the English taxes, saying "They were
very considerable, he heard". Sterne admitted that the
taxes of his country were considerable enough, "if we knew
but how to collect them", and made the gentleman a low
bow. That evening Sterne received an invitation "to his
music and table" for the season.

La Popeliniere had a musical rival in Baron de Bagge,
chamberlain to the King of Prussia. The baron was a melo-
maniac of large wealth, who fancied that he possessed great
musical talent, though he could scarce play the violin. He
came to Paris and opened a salon with an array of musicians,
whom he paid to take imaginary lessons from him. It was
not Sterne but another who once remarked to the baron that
he had never heard any one play the violin like him. Sterne
found the baron's concerts "very fine, both music and com-
pany". The next night after attending one of them, he
supped at the Temple, with the Prince de Conti, who lived
there in great state, with a court of his own.

With much amusement Sterne studied the various femi-
nine types seen in the salons, a summary of which he gave
in a sketch of Madame de Vence, said to have been a de-
scendant of Madame de Sevigne. "There are three epochas",
he observed in speaking of her, "in the empire of a French
woman — She is coquette — then deist — then devote. * * *
When thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her domin-

PARIS 287

ions of the slaves of love, she repeoples them with slaves of

infidelity and then with the slaves of the church.

Madame de V[ence] was vibrating betwixt the first of these
epochas." Seated upon the sofa together "for the sake of
disputing the point of religion more closely", Sterne told her
that, whereas it might be her principle to believe nothing, it
was nevertheless a most dangerous thing for a beauty to turn
deist, and thereby remove all those checks and restraints which
religion east about the passions. "I declare", says Sterne,
"I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de

V[ence] She affirmed to Mons. D[iderot] and the Abbe

M[orellet], that in one half -hour I had said more for revealed
religion than all their Encyclopedia had said aginst it."
Madame de Venee put off, as it turned out, the epoch of
deism for two years.

"I remember", says Sterne further, "it was in this
Coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was shewing
the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de
Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the
room to tell me my solitaire was pinn'd too strait about my

neck It should be plus badinant, said the Count, looking

down upon his own but a word, Mons. Torick, to the

wise

" And from the wise, Mons. le Count, replied I mak-
ing him a bow is enough.

"The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardour
than ever I was embraced by mortal man."

Anecdotes must always be accepted with a grain of allow-
ance. "I do a thousand things", Sterne wrote to Garriek,
"which cut no figure, but in the doing — and as in London,
I have the honour of having done and said a thousand things
I never did or dream 'd of — and yet I dream abundantly."
The anecdotes that I have mingled with the narrative, how-
ever, are very much better authenticated than is the usual
case, — some by Suard through his biographer Garat, and most
by Sterne himself, who, of course, ornamented them after his
own fashion. In paying the French in their own polite coin,
Sterne came at times, as he felt himself, perilously near
sycophancy. "For three weeks together", he said, shorten-

288 LAURENCE STERNE

ing the period for artistic purposes, "I was of every man's

opinion I met. Pardi! ce Moris. Yorick a autant d'esprit

que nous autres. II raisonne bien, said another G'est

un ion enfant, said a third, And at this price I could

have eaten and drank and been merry all the days of my life

at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest reckoning 1 grew ashamed

of it. It was the gain of a slave every sentiment of

honour revolted against it the higher I got, the more was

I forced upon my beggarly system.'" But to go on. In one
of the salons Sterne encountered Crebillon the younger, wit
and novelist, author of Les Egaremens de Cosur et de
I'E sprit. Before they separated, they entered into a comic
convention. Crebillon agreed to write Sterne "an expostu-
latory letter upon the indecorums of Tristram Shandy" and
Sterne was to .reply with "a recrimination upon the liber-
ties" in Crebillon 's works. The two pamphlets were "to be
printed together — Crebillon against Sterne — Sterne against
Crebillon — the copy to be sold, and the money equally
divided." The scheme miscarried, either because, as Sterne
predicted, Crebillon was too lazy to perform his part of the
jest, or because — and more likely — he was unable to read and
understand Tristram Shandy.

Of all the prizes Sterne drew in the French capital, none
pleased him quite so much as his winning the attention of
Louis Philippe, Due d 'Orleans. Though only thirty-seven
years old, the duke had already had a brilliant career in the
army. At Dettingen a horse was shot under him. The war
with England over, he had come in from the field, and was
giving himself up, like other officers of rank, to pleasure
and friendships, alternating his residence, with a strolling
court, between the Palais Boyal and his seat at Bagnolet.
For his entertainment he kept in his household Carmontelle, to
write novels and farces and to paint his friends at Court.
Struck by Sterne's eccentric character, the duke requested the
pleasure of adding, from Carmontelle 's hand, the humourist's
portrait to a favourite collection of small water-colours.
Carmontelle drew Sterne in profile at full length, as he stood,
it would seem, on the terrace of the Palais Royal, with the
city and the dome of the Invalides in the background.

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Lavirence Sterne
Prom a watercolour by Carmontelle at Chantilly

PABIS 289

Sterne turned his face towards the palace gardens, and
bent slightly forward as he laid his right arm across the
back of a chair, half closing the hand. His left hand he
thrust into a pocket, and threw one leg gracefully across the
other. His spare figure was dressed faultlessly for the
occasion in complete black, with ruffled lace-sleeves and lace-
cravat tied loose, just as the Count de Faineant had told him
it ought to be. One misses the fine eyes of the front view
chosen by Keynolds, but about the mouth are the same lines
of mirth and good nature, with a trace of the full lips so
conspicuous in the Eamsay portrait of Sterne's youth. It
is the portrait of a man growing old in his labours and pleas-
ures, taken, Sterne thought, "most expressively".*

Sterne's original design of going south had been upset
by the improvement of his health, and "the great civilities"
of his new friends, from whom he found it hard to break
away. So he decided to trail on in Paris until the end of
May and then return home through Holland. But early in
April came disturbing news from York. His daughter
Lydia, who had suffered from asthma for several years, was
declining so rapidly that her mother feared she could not
survive another English winter. On receiving the alarming
message, Sterne reconsidered his plans. For himself, his
cheeks now rosy, he was ready to go back to his desk. And
yet perhaps it would be better, after all, for him to summon
his wife and daughter over to Paris and pass a winter with
them at Toulouse, "free from coughs and colds". The
faculty strongly advised this course for the complete restora-
tion of his own health beyond likelihood of relapse. Sterne
at once wrote to Lord Fauconberg and the Archbishop of
York, explaining the situation, and thereby gaining their
assent to an extension of his leave of absence from Coxwold.
He was going, he told them, to the south of France, not so
much on his own account as his daughter's, whom he was
anxious to save if possible. But Sterne, as well as his
physicians, had misread his condition. Near the middle of
April, he went out to Versailles to solicit the necessary pass-

*Tho portrait is now in the Due d'Aumale's collection at Chantilly.
It has been reproduced by Messrs. Colnaghi and Co., London.
19

290 LATTEENCE STERNE

ports from the Duke of Choiseul. On his return, he was
attacked with a fever, "which ended", Sterne says, "the
worst way it could for me, in a defluxion poitrine, as the
French physieians call it. It is generally fatal to weak lungs,
so that I have lost in ten days all I have gain'd since I came
here ; and, from a relaxation of my lungs, have lost my voice
entirely, that 'twill be much if I ever quite recover it".

As usual, Sterne was soon out of bed as if nothing serious
had occurred. But the season was passing and there were
fewer engagements. When the curtain falls upon his five
months of dinners, he was, as first seen, among his country-
men, doing honour to his Majesty George the Third. This
was the last scene in the Shandy drama for the present.
The story is told by the other chief performer, by Louis
Dutens, the diplomatist, in his Memoirs. Dutens, though a
Frenchman, had been at the Court of Turin for some time as
charge d'affaires for the King of England. On the appoint-
ment of George Pitt, first Baron Rivers, as Envoy and Min-
ister to Turin, Dutens was ordered to Paris to take part in
the preliminary negotiations for peace between France and
England. He set out from Turin on the tenth of May,
travelling in company with the Marquis of Tavistock, son
of the Duke of Bedford — a young man only twenty-three
years old, — and John Turberville Needham, the Roman Catho-
lic scientist who had a hot tilt with Voltaire over the question
of miracles. Needham was on the journey homewards, after
making the grand tour as tutor to John Talbot Dillon, a
young Irishman about Lord Tavistock's age, who will figure
later as one of Sterne's close associates. Dillon, it may be
said immediately for his further identification, spent most
of his life in foreign travel and in writing about Spain and
other lands he visited. Emperor Joseph the Second of
Austria bestowed upon him the title of Free Baron of the
Holy Roman Empire. On the anniversary of George the
Third's birthday, the fourth. of June, Lord Tavistock invited
Sterne and a few other English gentlemen who were still in
Paris to meet his Turin friends at dinner. Without formal
introduction, it would appear, the guests sat down to table.
What occurred I may leave to the pen of Dutens himself, a

PARIS 291

queer character, who had done queer things at the Court of
the King of Sardinia, vague rumours of which had doubtless
reached Sterne:

"I sat", says Dutens,* "between Lord Berkeley, who was
going to Turin, and the famous Sterne, author of Tristram
Shandy, who was considered as the Rabelais of England.
We were very jovial during dinner; and drank, in the Eng-
lish manner, the toasts of the day. The conversation turned
upon Turin, which several of the company were on the point
of visiting: upon which Mr. Sterne, addressing himself to
me, asked me if I knew Mr. Dutens, naming me. I replied,
'Yes, very intimately.' The whole company began to laugh;
and Sterne, who did not suppose me so near him, imagined
that this Mr. Dutens must be a very singular character,
since the mention of the name alone excited merriment.
'Is he not a rather strange fellow?' added he, immediately.

'Yes', replied I, 'an original.' 'I thought so', continued

he; 'I have heard him spoken of:' and then he began to draw
a picture of me, the truth of which I pretended to acknow-
ledge; while Sterne, seeing that the subject amused the com-
pany, invented from his fertile imagination many stories,
which he related in his way, to the great diversion of us all. ' '

"I was the first", Dutens goes on to say, "who withdrew;
and I had scarcely left the house, when they told him who
I was: they persuaded him that I had restrained myself at
the time from respect to Lord Tavistock; but that I was not
• to be offended with impunity, and that he might expect to
see me on the next day, to demand satisfaction for the
improper language which he had used concerning me.
Indeed he thought he had carried his raillery too far, for he
was a little merry : he therefore came the following morning
to see me, and to beg pardon for anything that he might
have said to offend me; excusing himself by that circum-
stance, and by the great desire he had to amuse the company,
who had appeared so merrily disposed from the moment he
first mentioned my name. I stopped him short at once, by
assuring him that I was as much amused at his mistake as
any of the party; that he had said nothing which could
'Memoirs of a Traveller, II, 5-8 (London, 1806).

292 LAURENCE STEENE

offend me ; and that, if he had known the man he had spoken
of as well as I did, he might have said much worse things
of him. He was delighted with my answer, requested my
friendship, and went away highly pleased with me."*

* This merry jest was strangely employed by Thackeray to prove
that Sterne was not a true gentleman, although he may be regarded as
one by "my Superfine friend". It is perhaps worth while to quote the
novelist's paragraph (afterwards suppressed), as an example of the way
in which Sterne has been often misinterpreted. After retelling the
story, Thackeray remarked:

"Ah, dear Laurence! You are lucky in having such a true gentle-
man as my friend to appreciate you! You see he was lying, but then
he was amusing the whole company. When Laurence found they were
amused, he told more lies. Your true gentlemen always do. Even to
get the laugh of the company at a strange table, perhaps you and I
would not tell lies: but then we are not true gentlemen. _ And see in
what a true gentlemanlike way Laurence carries off the lies! A man
who wasn't accustomed to lying might be a little disconcerted at meet-
ing with a person to whose face he had been uttering abuse and false-
hood. Not so Laurence. He goes to Dutens; * * * embraces him, and
asks for his friendship! Heaven bless him! Who would not be
honoured by the friendship of a true gentleman, who had just told lies
about you to your face?" — Cornhill Magazine, II, 633.

CHAPTER XIII

JOURNEY TO TOULOUSE
JULY AND AUGUST, 1762

Amid the merriments of the English colony, Sterne was
playing admirably the part of paterfamilias. His wife and
daughter had come into York, as was customary, for the
previous winter, where they were occupying a house in the
Minster Yard, under the protection of Hall- Stevenson. "My
family, my Lord", he wrote to the Earl of Fauconberg, "is
a very small machine, but it has many wheels in it, and I am
forced too often to turn them about — not as I would — but as
I can." No sooner, however, had Sterne regained his emo-
tional poise, after the first exciting weeks in Paris, than he
got into touch with the complicated machine at home, and
guided its movements as well as he could at long distance.
He related in letters to Mrs. Sterne such incidents in his
great reception as he thought would interest her most, and
gave her instructions in the care and management of Lydia,
who should be kept by all means to her French. As presents
to his wife, he sent home two snuff-boxes, in charge of a
friend, one filled with garnets and the other containing an
etching of Carmontelle 's water-colour. When it was decided
that Mrs. Sterne and Lydia should come over and go south
with him, he posted off letter after letter, describing in
minute detail all arrangements for the journey. As he
stated it in one of the letters, "I have almost drain 'd my
brains dry on the subject".

It was not an easy thing for an English parson with only
a moderate income to establish his household in another
country; but Sterne took up the practical problem with the
method and good sense that he had applied in earlier years
to numerous parish questions. Toulouse was chosen for
several reasons. Provisions he found, on enquiry, were cheap

293

294 LAUEENGB STERNE

there; several English friends, including "old Hewitt" and
his family, were to be there for the winter, and the town was
recommended to him by the faculty. While his plans were
forming, he was referred for practical help to an "Abbe
Maekarty" — doubtless a member of the Irish MacCarthy
Eeagh family, then settled at Toulouse. The Abbe, who had
previously rendered similar aid to Hall-Stevenson and the
Skelton set, was commissioned to take a pleasant house for
the Sternes, near or within the city, at his discretion.

A house engaged and the cost of living reckoned up,
Sterne next adjusted his affairs at home to the new arrange-
ments. James Kilner, his curate at Coxwold, was recom-
mended to the Archbishop of York for the priesthood.
Richard Chapman, steward of Newburgh Priory, was to look
after the finances of the parish in Sterne's interest. In like
manner Stephen Croft was to represent Sterne at Sutton
and Stillington, where important parish matters needed
attention, for some of the land-owners wished to inclose
Rascal Common. Sterne wrote back that he would not stand
in the way of the project, provided he received his share.
A bureau had to be broken open for Sterne's deeds, and Croft
was given a power of attorney to act for the vicar. The
squire was also delegated to provide for the commissary's
visitations of Pickering and Pocklington. All moneys re-
ceived were to be sent up to London by Sterne's agents, to
Selwin, banker and correspondent of Panchaud and Foley,
in Rue St. Sauveur, Paris. In turn, the banking firm at
Paris was to remit to Messrs. Brousse et Pils of Toulouse.
Besides all this, Mrs. Sterne was enjoined to bring over at
least three hundred pounds in her pocket, for that amount
would be immediately necessary. There were still other
little preparations incident to a long journey, to which
Sterne did not fail to call her attention:

"Bring your silver coffee-pot, 'twill serve both to give
water, lemonade, and orjead — to say nothing of coffee and
chocolate. * * * Do not say I forgot you, or whatever can

be conducive to your ease of mind, in this journey 1 wish

I was with you, to do these offices myself, and to strew roses
on your way — but I shall have time and occasion to shew

JOURNEY TO TOULOUSE 295

you I am not wanting Now, my dears, once more pluck

up your spirits — trust in God — in me — and in yourselves
— with this, was you put to it, you would encounter all

these difficulties ten times told Write instantly, and

tell me you triumph over all fears ; tell me Lydia is better,

and a helpmate to you You say she grows like me let

her shew me she does so in her contempt of small dangers,
and fighting against the apprehensions of them, which is
better still. * * * Give my love to Mr. Fothergill, and to
those true friends which Envy has spared me — and for the
rest, laissez passer. * * * Dear Bess, I have a thousand

wishes, but have a hope for every one of them Tou shall

chant the same jubilate, my dears, so God bless you. My
duty to Lydia, which implies my love too. Adieu, believe
me Your affectionate, L. Sterne."

• Owing to many delays, it was the twenty-first of June, or
a day or two after, when Mrs. Sterne and Lydia set out from
York for London, under the most precise directions from the
head of the family. "I would advise you", he wrote to
them, "to take three days in coming up, for fear of heating

yourselves. See that they do not give you a bad vehicle,

when a better is in the yard, but you will look sharp

drink small Rhenish to keep you cool, (that is if you like it.)
Live well, and deny yourselves nothing your hearts wish.
So God in heaven prosper and go along with you." On
arriving in London, they put up with their friends the
Edmundsons, who showed them many "marks of kindness",
to the satisfaction of Sterne. Into the scant week they
stayed in town was crowded much business and shopping, if
they executed the contents of letters that had been coming
every post from Paris. Most important of all, Mrs. Sterne
was to go with Mr. Edmundson to Becket 's and collect what
might be due on the Shandys. Becket had sold 2824 copies,
which should have yielded the author £300 or more. How
far Sterne had already drawn on his publisher for expenses
in Paris is not known ; but there was probably a comfortable
sum still to his credit. Next, Mrs. Sterne and her adviser
must, if possible, induce Becket to purchase the remainder

296 LAURENCE STERNE

of the edition, numbering in the whole 4000 sets, by the offer
of "a handsome allowance for the chances and drawbacks"
on his side. Should they succeed to this extent, then they
might try him on the copyright, holding out as a bait the
promise of the nay-say on the next instalment of Shandy.
Becket gave Mrs. Sterne a bill addressed to his Paris cor-
respondent in settlement of the account to date, but did not
touch the bait set for the unsold copies and the copyright.

After this business with Becket, Mrs. Sterne should make
additions to her wardrobe. "If you consider", wrote her

husband, "Lydia must have two slight negligees you will

want a new gown or two as for painted linens, buy them

in town, they will be more admired because English than

French. Mrs. Hewit writes me word that I am mistaken

about buying silk cheaper at Toulouse than Paris, that she

advises you to buy what you want here where they are

very beautiful and cheap, as well as blonds, gauzes, &c.

these I say will all cost you sixty guineas — and you must
have them — for in this country nothing must be spared

for the back and if you dine on an onion, and lie in a

garret seven stories high, you must not betray it in your
cloaths, according to which you are well or ill look'd on."

Then came numerous small purchases conducive to the
peace of the household, which Sterne huddled together in
his letters:

"Do not forget the watch-chains bring a couple for a

gentleman's watch likewise; we shall lie under great obliga-
tions to the Abbe M[ackarty] and must make him such a
small acknowledgement ; according to my way of nourishing,

'twill be a present worth a kingdom to him. They have

bad pins, and vile needles here bring for yourself, and

some for presents as also a strong bottle-skrew, for what-
ever Scrub we may hire as butler, coachman, &c, to uncork
us our Prontiniac. * * * I had like to have forgot a most
necessary thing, there are no copper tea-kettles to be had in
France, and we shall find such a thing the most comfortable

utensil in the house buy a good strong one, which will

hold two quarts — a dish of tea will be a comfort to us in
our journey south 1 have a bronze tea-pot, which we will

JOURNEY TO TOULOUSE 297

carry also — as china cannot be brought over from Eng-
land, we must make up a villainous party-coloured tea
equipage, to regale ourselves, and our English friends,
whilst we are at Toulouse. ' ' In the list were also knives and
cookery-books, with three sets of Shandy and three sets of
Sermons for presents to Parisian friends. And finally to
the comfort of a wife who had the amiable habit of snuff-
taking : ' ' Give the Custom-House officers what I told you

at Calais give more, if you have much Scotch snuff but

as tobacco is good here, you had best bring a Scotch mill and
make it yourself, that is, order your valet to manufacture it

'twill keep him out of mischief."

If Sterne's plans did not miscarry, a good-natured horse-
trader, who had brought over a sister of Panchaud's, con-
ducted Mrs. Sterne and Lydia to Dover, put them up at the
Cross Keys, and saw them across the Channel on a cartel ship.
At Calais they were to lodge at the Lyon d 'Argent, the
master of which they must look out for, as he was "a Turk
in grain". With the inn-keeper they would find a letter
giving final directions, with an enclosure from "Mr. Cole-
brooks, the minister of Swisserland's secretary", addressed
to the custom-house officer. "You must be cautious", Mrs.

Sterne was warned again, "about Scotch snuff take half

a pound in your pocket, and make Lyd do the same." At
this time it was well-nigh impossible for travellers to obtain
conveyance from Calais to Paris, since all the chaises of
France had been sent to the army to bring in the officers.
By good luck, however, Sterne obtained a fine one from his
friend Thomas Thornhill of London, who was returning
from a continental tour. "You will be in raptures", wrote
Sterne, "with your chariot. — Mr. E,. a gentleman of for-
tune, who is going to Italy, and has seen it, has offered me

thirty guineas for my bargain. You will wonder all the

way, how I am to find room in it for a third to ease you

of this wonder, 'tis by what the coachmakers here call a
cave, which is a second bottom added to that you set your
feet upon, which lets the person (who sits over against you)
down with his knees to your ancles, and by which you have
all more room and what is more, less heat, because

298 LAURENCE STERNE

his head does not intercept the fore-glass little or nothing

Lyd and 1 will enjoy this by turns; sometimes I will

take a bidet (a little post-horse) and scamper before

at other times I shall, sit in fresco upon the arm-chair without

doors, and one way or other will do very well. 1 im under

infinite obligations to Mr. Thornhill, for accommodating me
thus, and so genteelly, for 'tis like making a present of it."
The chaise was to be left at Calais with a written order for
its delivery to Mrs. Sterne. "Send for your chaise", was

the last caution, "into the court-yard, and see all is tight

Buy a chain at Calais, strong enough not to be cut off, and
let your portmanteau be tied on the fore part of your chaise

for fear of a dog's trick so God bless you both, and

remember me to my Lydia."

Travelling toute doucement, owing to the heat, and
refreshed by the tea they brought with them, Mrs. Sterne and
Lydia arrived in Paris on Thursday the eighth of July. It
had been for Sterne a long and anxious period of waiting,
varied by some amusements. The summer had set in hot
about the first of May, and the heat increased every day,
until Paris became "as hot as Nebuchadnezzar's oven".
Sterne nevertheless undertook to go about as if he were in
cool Yorkshire. One good story of his excursions he himself
told at the expense of his facility with French. True, he
had quickly attuned his ear to understanding the language,
and he learned to speak it easily, but only after an English-
man's fashion, that is, with a disregard of the idioms and
the auxiliary verbs. "I have had a droll adventure here",

as Sterne described it for the entertainment of Lady D ,

"in which my Latin was of some service to me 1 had

hired a chaise and a horse to go about seven miles into the
country, but, Shandean like, did not take notice that the

horse was almost, dead when I took him Before I got

halfway, the poor animal dropp'd down dead so I was

forced to appear before the Police, and began to tell my
story in French, which was, that the poor beast had to do
with a worse beast than himself, namely his master, who had
driven him all the day before (Jehulike) and that he had
neither had corn, or hay, therefore I was not to pay for the

JOURNEY TO TOULOUSE 299

horse but I. might as well have whistled, as have spoke

French, and I believe my Latin was equal to my uncle
Toby's Lilabulero — being not understood because of it's
purity, but by dint of words I forced my judge to do me

justice no common thing by the way in Prance."

His imprudence, together with attention to his wife's
journey and the approaching settlement at Toulouse, brought
on, towards the end of June, another severe hemorrhage.
"It happen 'd in the night", he wrote to Hall-Stevenson,
"and I bled the bed full, and finding in the morning I was
likely to bleed to death, I sent immediately for a surgeon to

bleed me at both arms this saved me, and with lying

speechless three days, I recovered upon my back in bed; the
breach healed, and in a week after I got out." Sterne at
once gave up a design of taking his wife and daughter to
Spa through the hot summer, convinced now that he must
hasten to Toulouse for rest and quiet. They remained in
Paris for a week or ten days, time enough for sight-seeing
and necessary purchases of silks, blonds, and gauzes. As a
present to Mrs. Edmundson, they sent over to London by
"Mr. Stanhope, the Consul of Algiers (I mean his lady)"
an India taffety, in memory of recent hospitality and kind-
ness. Lydia, said her father, did nothing at first but sit by
the window of their apartments and "complain of the tor-
ment of being frizzled". He expressed the wish that she
might ever remain thus the "child of nature", for he hated
the "children of art". The day before leaving Paris, the
Sternes received a pleasant visit from Lawson Trotter, an
uncle of Hall-Stevenson and the master of Skelton before
the year forty-five. The old Jacobite, who feared to return
to England, came on business wherein Sterne acted as agent
for Hall-Stevenson. He stayed to dinner, after which Sterne
showed him a copy of the Crazy Tales just out; and was
"made happy beyond expression" by the book and "more
so with its frontispiece", the humorous sketch of Skelton
Castle. But for Sterne himself, the visit awakened home-
sickness for Yorkshire. " Tis now", he wrote a few weeks
afterwards to Hall-Stevenson, "I wish all warmer climates,
countries, and everything else, at , that separates me

300 LAURENCE STERNE

from our paternal seat ce sera la ou reposera ma cendre —

et ce sera la oil mon cousin viendra repandre les pleurs dues
a notre amitie."

On Monday the nineteenth of July, as near as can be
made out, the Sternes began the long and expensive journey
to Toulouse by way of Lyons, Avignon, and Montpellier,
travelling by post most of the way, as was Sterne's custom.
Their chaise, which was narrow and cramped, despite the
cave for Lydia's feet, they piled with baggage, before and
aft, mountains high. For such a load were necessary at least
four horses with two postillions, which would be exchanged
for fresh ones at the successive stages. As the posts were
then farmed out by the king, the exactions were most
oppressive, especially at royal posts like Lyons, where one paid
double. It is certain that the three hundred pounds which
Mrs. Sterne brought over in her pocket shrunk more than
half by the time the party arrived in Toulouse. The serious
details of the journey Sterne never cared to recall, but the
humorous side of it he touched upon in a letter or two, and
made it the main subject of the next volume of Tristram
Shandy. By abating his extravagances here and there, per-
haps we may tell the story somewhat as it was, though the
narrative will be scant and never quite trustworthy.

Sterne chose the longest route to Toulouse with the mani-
fest intent of sight-seeing. To this end he took along, as any
one may see, the Nouveau Voyage en France by Piganiol de
la Force, the Baedeker of the period, who mapped out all
the post roads and described all the things which a traveller
should observe by the way and at the halting places. In the
pocket of the chaise were placed also note-books or loose
sheets, on which Sterne was to record his own impressions.
But owing to the extreme heat, and the many annoyances at
the different posts, Sterne implies that he paid little atten-
tion to the guide-book's list of videnda. None of the first
places on the route — Fontainebleau, Sens, and Joigny — in-
terested him much, until he reached Auxerre, about which he
could "go on forever"; though he had in fact little to say of
the town, where he may have strolled about for a day or
two. On a visit to the ruined Abbey of St. Germain, the

JOUBNEY TO TOULOUSE 301

sacristan pointed out the tomb of St. Maxima, in life "one
of the fairest and most beautiful ladies, either of Italy or
France", who four centuries ago came to Auxerre to touch
the bones of St. Germain, and, after lying in her coffin two
hundred years or more, was enrolled among the saints.
Sterne thought that her rise, like the rest of the army of
martyrs, was "a desperate slow one"; and asked, as he
walked on to the next tomb, "Who the duce has got lain down
here, besides her?" The sacristan, starting to reply that it
was St. Optat, a bishop — was cut short by his visitor, who
remarked that the bones of St. Optat were most fortunate
in their resting place, as Mr. Shandy could have foretold
from his name, the most auspicious that a bishop might bear.
This may have been a sly hit at the Archbishop of York, who
still enjoyed the old option of appointing a favourite to a
benefice in the diocese of a newly consecrated bishop. So
ended Auxerre.

All the way from Paris there had been more than the
usual stops and hindrances from broken ropes, slipping
knots, and loosened staples. Still the family had travelled
thus far with a degree of comfort; but as they proceeded
farther south, vexations were turned to downright suffering.
Their conveyance proved hopelessly inadequate; the inns
grew more and more intolerable; the roads were dusty; and
the southern sun beat upon them with deadly rays. After
it was all over, Sterne wrote to his friend Foley the banker,
with special reference to the journey from this point south-
wards: "I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as

broad as a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were

toasted, roasted, grill'd, stew'd and carbonaded on one side

or other all the way and being all done enough (assez

cuits) in the day, we were ate up at night by bugs, and other
unswept out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length of pos-
session gives right) of every inn we lay at." On one of
these fierce days, just as Lyons was in sight, the chaise over-
turned and broke "into a thousand pieces". Chaise and
baggage were thrown "higgledy-piggledy" into a cart, behind
which the pilgrims walked demurely into the city.

As they were passing through the streets to the inn of

302 LAURENCE STEENE

Monsieur Le Blanc, in the western quarter of the town, a
pert chaise-vamp er stepped nimbly up to Sterne and asked
if he would have his chaise refitted. "No, no, said I, shak-
ing my head sideways Would Monsieur chuse to sell it?

rejoin 'd the undertaker With all my soul, said I the

iron work is worth forty livres — and the glasses worth
forty more — and the leather you may take to live on."
Thornhill's beautiful chariot, which cost Sterne ten guineas,
accordingly went for four louis d'ors. To make good the
loss as well as to avoid further misfortunes on the road,
Sterne decided to take the boat to Avignon, which left the
next day at noon. By changing to this mode of travel, his
purse would be the better, as he reckoned it, by four hundred
livres. The next morning he was up early, breakfasling on
"milk-coffee", and ready to start out by eight o'clock to see
those curiosities of Lyons which Piganiol de la Force made
so much of. Whereupon a series of cross-accidents inter-
vened to bring all to naught. As he was about to pass from
the basse cour of his inn to the street, he was met at the gate
by an ass munching the stem of an artichoke. He had to
stop and watch Old Honesty drop and pick up the bitter
morsel half a dozen times, and then to try, out of pleasantry,
the effect of a macaroon upon him in place of the artichoke.
So much of the famous communion with the ass at Lyons
may possibly be fact. Once outside the gate, Sterne was
stopped by a commissary from the post-office "with a rescript
in his hand for the payment of some six livres odd sous,
* * * for the next post from hence to St. Pons" in the route
to Avignon. Puzzled at the demand, Sterne explained to the
commissary that he did not intend to take post, but was
going by water down the Ehone. "C'est tout egal", replied
the commissary, and handed Monsieur the rescript to read for
himself. From the curious document, Sterne learned why
Monsieur La Popeliniere, the rich farmer-general, was able
to keep open house and a band of musicians for the enter-
tainment of all Paris; more specifically he learned, by the
help of the officer, "that if you set out with an intention of
running post from Paris to Avignion, &c, you shall not
change that intention or mode of travelling, without first

JOUENEY TO TOULOUSE 303

satisfying the fermiers for two posts further than the place
you repent at". After a vigorous protest, Sterne paid the
six livres in order that the revenues of the kingdom might
not fall short through the fickleness of an English gentleman.
Determined, however, , to make an immediate record of
the imposition, Sterne put his hand into his coat-pocket for
the note-book he had brought with him ; but, to his consterna-
tion, the note-book, containing all his clever observations, was
gone — lost or stolen. As soon as his head cleared up a little,
it occurred to him that he had left his notes in the pocket of
his chaise, and in selling the vehicle, had sold his notes along
with it. Nothing to do then but hasten off to the chaise-
vamper, where they were discovered and returned to him.
As Sterne pointed the story for his comic history, the sheets
had been torn up the night before by the wife of the chaise-
maker, and used as papillotes in frizzling her hair. She
untwisted the papers from her curls and placed them. gravely
one by one in his hat. The morning was now so far advanced
that only an hour was left for seeing the objects for which
Lyons was renowned. With Francois, his valet de place, he
ran over to the Cathedral of St. Jean for just a look at the
mechanism of the wonderful clock set up in the choir by
Lippius of Bale. He got no farther than the west door of
the cathedral, where a minor canon told him that the "great
clock was all out of joints and had not gone for some years";
so he hurried away to the Jesuits' library, where reposed,
among the treasures, a general history of China in thirty
volumes, all in the Chinese language and Chinese characters.
That curiosity he was destined not to peruse, for the library
was closed, all the Jesuits being ill, Sterne opined, of a colic.
This was Sterne's way of saying that the Jesuits were out of
favour with the ministry. Nothing now remained on his
schedule of videnda except the Tomb of the two Lovers, out-
side the gate, in the Faubourg de Vaise. The origin of that
tomb or little temple and what it meant, Sterne knew from
his guide-book, had been for a long time a question in dispute
among the savants. Adopting the sentimental explanation,
Sterne felt sure that it was a monument erected to the con-
stancy of Amandus and Amanda, who, after long separation

304 LATJBENCE STERNE

and captivity, met at Lyons, and, flying into each other's
arms, dropped down dead for joy. That spot of all others in
the world must not be missed. The site of the tomb was
easily found, but no monument was visible, for it had been
razed to the ground many years before, as was indeed the
fact, by the consulat de Lyon.

Sterne recrossed the city barely in time for the noon boat,
aboard which his family and baggage awaited him. He is
strangely reticent on the voyage down the Rhone, except to
intimate that he was pleased with the rush of the stream
while his boat shot merrily along between "banks advancing
and returning", and by the foot of the vine-covered Hermit-
age and Cote-Rotie. On the evening he landed at Avignon,
the wind was blowing violently, though it had not reached
the fury of the mistral ; and Sterne lost his hat. He wished
to enquire of some learned man about the proverb that
"Avignon is more subject to high winds than any town in all
France", but he could find no one to converse with except
his landlord, for everybody else was either duke, marquis, or
count. To escape for the future the discomforts of the jour-
ney from Paris to Lyons, he sent his wife and daughter on
by post, while he engaged for himself a mule and servant
with horse. As he was setting out from his inn, a ludicrous
adventure befell him much like one that happened to Smollett
at Joigny a year later. The irritable novelist, sitting in his
chaise before the post-office, waiting for a change of horses,
was politely addressed by a man who stepped up to the
chaise-window. Supposing the stranger to be the inn-keeper
of the place, Smollett turned to him savagely and ordered
him to help a servant in adjusting the displaced trunks. A
few minutes later he learned to his chagrin that he had
insulted a nobleman. Under similar circumstances Yorick's
conduct was more urbane:

"Prithee, friend, said I, take hold of my mule for a

moment for I wanted to pull off one of my jack-boots,

which hurt my heel the man was standing quite idle at

the door of the inn, and as I had taken it into my head, he
was someway concerned about the house or stable, I put the
bridle into his hand so begun with the boot: when I

JOURNEY TO TOULOUSE 305

had finished the affair, I turned about to take the mule from

the man, and thank him

" But Monsieur le Marquis had walked in "

On the morning of the start, Sterne was in buoyant mood,
in anticipation of the rare journey through the rich plain
of Languedoc to the banks of the Garonne. He was also in
excellent health. "I had left Death", he said playfully,
"the Lord knows — and He only — how far behind me. * * *
Still he pursued but like one who pursued his prey with-
out hope as he lagg'd, every step he lost, soften 'd his

looks." One may fancy the scene as the travellers crossed
the bridge at Avignon. Ahead was the chaise with Mrs.
Sterne and Lydia, followed by the owner of the outfit strid-
ing along on foot, with a gun thrown across his shoulder to
frighten off robbers; next came Sterne riding a mule; and
a servant on horseback brought up the rear, bearing his
master's luggage, in case the company should get separated
at night. If Sterne tells the truth, he loitered behind
terribly, stopping and talking to every one on the way —
peasants at their work, strolling beggars, pilgrims, fiddlers,
and friars. "I was always in company, and with great
variety too; * * * I am confident we could have passed
through Pall-Mali or St. Jawies's-Street for a month together,
with fewer adventures and seen less of human nature."

"With Sterne time counted for nothing. Meeting a couple
of Franciscans, who were more straitened for it than himself,
he even walked back with them half a mile in order to
complete an interesting conversation. He watched a drum-
maker, who was making drums for the fairs of Beaucaire and
Tarascon, enquiring of him the principles that underlay the
instruments, not because he wished to know them, but because
he wished to see the working of a peasant's mind in an
attempt to explain them. Of a gossip he bought a hand-
basket of Provence figs for five sous. Though a very small
trade, it gave him another and finer opportunity to study the
peasant in a case of abstract reasoning; for, on lifting the
vine-leaves, he discovered beneath the figs two dozen of eggs,
which the old woman had forgotten. Thereupon arose a nice
question of property: To whom belonged the eggs? It

20

306 LAUEBNCE STEENE

might be said that the eggs were Sterne's, inasmuch as he had
paid for the space they occupied. Against this position it
might be said with equal justice that he had not purchased
eggs, and so they could not be his. Sterne was quite willing
to resign all claim to the eggs; but then arose a still nicer
question : To whom belonged the basket f The question
puzzled alike the philosopher and the peasant ; for without the
basket to carry them in, neither the eggs nor the figs had
any value.

Sauntering along in this delightful fashion, Sterne made
a spurt somewhere between Avignon and Beaucaire, and
caught up with the chaise in time to share in the second
serious mishap since leaving Paris. It was towards the end
of July, the gala week at the fair of Beaucaire. "Can you
conceive", he wrote in his amusing way to Foley, "a worse
accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and
hour of it, four miles from either tree or shrub which could
cast a shade of the size of one of Eve's fig leaves — that we
should break a hind wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be
obliged in consequence to sit five hours on a gravelly road,

without one drop of water, or possibility of getting any

To mend the matter, my two postillions were two dough-
hearted fools, and fell a crying. Nothing was to be done !

By heaven, quoth I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, some-
thing shall be done, for I'll thrash you both within an inch

of your lives and then make you take each of you a horse,

and ride like two devils to the next post for a cart to carry

my baggage, and a wheel to carry ourselves Our luggage

weighed ten quintals 'twas the fair of Baueaire all

the world was going, or returning we were ask'd by every

soul who pass'd by us, if we were going to the fair of

Baucaire no wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough!

vous avez raison, mes amis."

The next post, whither the postillions were sent for cart
and chaise, was indeed Beaucaire. Thence the unfortunate
travellers proceeded to Nimes and Lunel, where Sterne closed
his narrative in the exquisite idyl of Nannette and the vil-
lage dance which he took part in at the end of a sultry day.

JOUBNEY TO TOULOUSE 307

Under the inspiration of the roundelay which he heard that
evening

"Viva la joia!

"Fidon la tristessa!"

he danced all' the way, he would have us understand, from
Lunel to Montpellier, "where there is the best Muscatto wine
in all France" — and thence on through Narbonne and Car-
cassonne to his habitation at Toulouse.

CHAPTER XIV

A GENTLEMAN OP PRANCE
AUGUST 1762— MAT 1764

The ancient capital of Languedoc stretches along the
right bank of the Garonne, crossed by the noble Pont-Neuf.
The centre of the town was then, as it is now, the Place du
Capitole, the seat of the municipal government. Near-by were
the University founded by Pope Gregory the Ninth, and the
Museum of Fine Arts, with the academies of science and belles-
lettres. Prom the Capitole, streets ran off in all directions,
terminating at the north in the beautiful church of St. Sernin,
the pride of Toulouse, and at the south in the Parliament
buildings, stately mansions, and extensive gardens and sub-
urbs. To the southwest was the Cathedral of St. Etienne, over
which presided Lomenie de Brienne, to become Minister of
Finance under Louis the Sixteenth. On his arrival early in
the second week of August, 1762, Sterne was pleased with the
town beyond anticipation. The Abbe Mackarty had rented
for him a large and well-furnished house from Monsieur Slig-
niac, apparently on the outer edge of the southern quarter,
and had attended to all those little details necessary to a
stranger's comfort. As soon as he had unpacked and looked
about him, Sterne wrote to Hall-Stevenson on the twelfth of
August .

"Here I am in my own house, quite settled by
M[ackarty]'s aid, and good-natured offices, for which I owe
him more than I* can express or know how to pay at present.

'Tis in the prettiest situation in Toulouse, with near

two acres of garden. * * * I have got a good cook my

wife a decent femme de chambre, and a good-looking laquais.

The Abbe has planned our expences, and set us in such

a train, we cannot easily go wrong tho' by the bye, the

d 1 is seldom found sleeping under a hedge."

308

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 309

And two days later he gave Foley other details:

"Well! here we are after all, my dear friend and most

deliciously placed at the extremity of the town, in an excel-
lent house well furnish 'd and elegant beyond anything I

look'd for Tis built in the form of a hotel, with a pretty

court towards the town and behind, the best gardens in

Toulouse, laid out in serpentine walks, and so large that
the company in our quarter usually come to walk there in the

evenings, for which they have my consent 'the more the

merrier.' The house consists of a good salle a manger

above stairs joining to the very great salle a compagnie as
large as the Baron d'Holbach's; three handsome bed-cham-
bers with dressing rooms to them below stairs two very

good rooms for myself, one to study in, the other to see com-
pany. 1 have moreover cellars round the court, and all

other offices Of the same landlord I have bargained to have

the use of a country-house which he has two miles out of
town, so that myself and all my family have nothing more to
do than take our hats and remove from the one to the other.

My landlord is moreover to keep the gardens in order

and what do you think I am to pay for all this? neither
more or less than thirty pounds a year."

Alternating between his hotel and country-house, Sterne
entered upon the life of a French gentleman, at the small
expense, as his wife estimated, of two hundred and fifty
pounds a year. Connected with his country-house was "a
handsome pavillion", which he renamed Pringello's Pavillion
in honour of Don Pringello, the fanciful title of an architect
whom Hall-Stevenson had recently celebrated in Crazy Tales,
as one of the Demoniacs. Within easy distance was similarly
established the eccentric William Hewitt whom Sterne had
met at Skelton and Scarborough. The two families were
constantly passing to and fro for dinner or supper. Between
meals Sterne took to drinking ass's milk in the morning and
cow's milk in the evening, a diet which was recommended to
him in this way by the physicians. In the heat of summer
there was little society at Toulouse, for the French gentlemen
were away in the country, and the usual English colony was
scattered at various resorts and in travel. With nothing thus

310 LAURENCE STERNE

to distract him, Sterne sat down in his study or his pavillion
to Tristram Shandy, in the hope that another instalment
might be completed for the next London season. He did not
begin, as is quite evident, with the seventh volume, which
describes the tour through France from Calais. Notes he had
made for the journey, but it had not occurred to him that
his travels could be grafted into Tristram Shandy. They
were to form, as first designed, a work separate and distinct.
His imagination was away in Shandy Hall and Yorkshire,
with my uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, and the widow Wad-
man, on a day in mid-August when he unscrewed his inkhorn
under the "genial sun" of Toulouse, in the "clear climate of
fantasy and perspiration". Hall-Stevenson's Crazy Tales
lay before him. Ten times a day he looked at the curious
frontispiece of Skelton Castle; and with his face turned
towards its turret, so near as the direction could be made out,
he plunged into my uncle Toby's amours, comprising the
eighth book of Tristram Shandy.

He advanced only a short distance, hardly beyond the
opening "crazy" chapters, containing a mad address to his
readers in imitation of Rabelais, and a claim that his method
of composition was "the most religious", if not the best in

the world; "for I begin with writing the first sentence •

and trusting to Almighty God for the second". While in
this exultant mood, he "fell ill of an epidemic vile fever,
which killed hundreds" about him. For six weeks he lay
between life and death, attended by the local physicians,
whom he declared "the errantest charletans in Europe".
"I withdrew", he wrote to Hall-Stevenson in October, "what
was left of me out of their hands, and recommended my

affairs entirely to Dame Nature She (dear goddess) has

saved me in fifty different pinching bouts, and I begin to
have a kind of enthusiasm now in her favour, and in my own,
That one or two more escapes will make me believe I shall
leave you all at last by translation, and not by fair death."

Sterne soon became as "stout and foolish" as ever,
and resumed my uncle Toby's amours, while the Abbe
Mackarty was out vintaging, and Lydia was "hard at it with
music, dancing, and French speaking". As he sat at his table

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 311

with a bottle of Frontiniae and glass at his side for a pledge
to Hall-Stevenson, he thought that he had as good reason for
being contented as the rest of his household. But Toulouse
somehow, he could not quite explain it, was no longer to his
taste. Had it not run counter to one of his hypotheses, he
would have laid his weariness to the climate, for the hot sum-
mer was being followed by a bitter cold autumn, which
obliged him and his family "to sit with whole pagells of wood
lighted up to our noses". In searching for a cause of his
ennui, he finally attributed it to "the eternal platitude of
the French character". Everybody was civil to him, but
civility with no variety in it wearied and "boddered" him to
death. To put him into spirits once more, he longed for a
visit from Tollot — who was again in Paris with Sir Charles
Danvers, — in order that he might die, not of ennui, but of
laughter.

On the approach of winter, Sterne's gaiety returned with-
out the aid of Sir Charles. French society doubtless improved
as soon as families of rank left their chateaux and came in for
the season and the local parliament. The Comtesse de Fumel
and Monsieur Bonrepos received on several days every week ;
and the Baron d'Orbessan, President of the assembly, kept
open house to which all were welcome, whether French or
foreigners.* Of these people, Sterne mentions only Dr.
Jamme, a lawyer and man of letters; but he must have been
an habitue of all the more fashionable salons, as were Tollot
and Hall-Stevenson when they visited Toulouse. They par-
ticularly liked the Baron d'Orbessan, who was himself some-
thing of a Demoniac. Many English travellers, who had been
running about Europe, fixed upon Toulouse for the whole or
a part of the winter. There was a happy society of them
distributed about in lodgings, and gyrating around the hotels
of the Sternes and the Hewitts. Among them, as they came

and went through the winter, was a shadowy Mrs. M

(Meadows, perhaps), with whom the Sternes sometimes dined;
and a Mr. Woodhouse, "a most amiable worthy man", who
stopped on his way to Italy, and whom Sterne took into his

* W. Durrant Cooper, Seven Letters written by Sterne and Ms
Friends, 6 (London, 1844).

312 LAUBENCE STEENE

own house. Every night they were all together at one place
or another, "fiddling, laughing and singing, and cracking
jokes". Early in December they all went to Hewitt's, "liv-
ing together like brothers and sisters", and practising a play
for the Christmas holidays, a diversion which had been sug-
gested by Sterne as a soulagement. Towards the middle oi
the month, as luck would have it, a company of English
strollers arrived in Toulouse to act comedies, if an audience
could be found. On Sterne's initiative, the two groups of
amateurs united forces and shifted their scene of action over
to his great salle a compagnie. After a fortnight in mak-
ing costumes and in learning their parts, they presented there
Mrs. Centlivre's Busy Body, with a grand orchestra impro-
vised for the occasion. The next week they played Vanbrugh
and Cibber's Journey to London, which Sterne, if he carried
out his design, rewrote in part, turning it into A Journey to
Toulouse. It is all very pretty to see Yorick in the role of
playwright and stage-manager and possibly actor.

The rest of the winter passed in interchange of visits ; and
when the English colony began to break up in the spring, the
Sternes all went to the Hewitts' country home for a week or
fortnight. But we have no further festivities to relate, for
Yorick was becoming depressed again. His purse was empty.
Since settling with Mrs. Sterne, Becket had sold up to April,
1763, only 182 copies of the last Shandys, and after that the
sale came to a stand-still. "Ten cart-loads" of the volumes,
Sterne said, still remained on their hands. That estimate was
an exaggeration for 991 sets, enough, none the less, to disap-
point him of a hundred pounds which he had expected at this
time. So Sterne had to depend upon remittances out of York-
shire, which were obviously inadequate for his mode of life.
He was spending more than twice the clear income from his rents
and parishes. By December he was reduced to "half a dozen
guineas"; and in March he had only "five Louis to vapour
with in this land of coxcombs". Foley, his banker, though
very kind and considerate, naturally hesitated to advance the
small sums which Sterne succeeded, however, in coaxing from
him month after month. To poverty of purse was added
poverty of spirit. During the winter, Sterne worked inter-

A GENTLEMAN OF FKANCE 313

mittently at Tristram, and revised more of his old sermons,
perhaps writing new ones, with a view to publication; but his
progress had been slow. April came and nothing was ready
for the press ; nothing could be sent over to Becket for further
revenue.

Behind this double bankruptcy, financial and intellectual,
which threatened Sterne, lay the wretched state of his health.
Toulouse, ill-drained and subject to cold and damp winds in
winter, had not agreed with him at all. True, there were
days extending into weeks when he felt well, and imagined
that the dread disease had been arrested, for there were as
yet no returns of the hemorrhages of last summer. In these
periods he went on with his literary work, and wrote "long
nonsensical" letters to Hall-Stevenson, as if completely rein-
stated in health and spirits ; but such was really not the case.
Over against the joyous letters to the master of Skelton,
should be set one to Archbishop Drummond in May, 1763,
dismal in its forebodings and yet flashing with humour :

"I have been fixed here with my family these ten months,
and by God's blessing it has answered all I wished for, with
regard to my daughter; I cannot say so much for myself,
having since the first day of my arrival here been in a con-
tinual warfare with agues, fevers, and physicians the first

brought my blood to so poor a state, that the physicians found
it necessary to enrich it with strong bouillons, and strong
bouillons and soups a, sante threw me into fevers, and fevers

brought on loss of blood, and loss of blood agues so that

as war begets poverty, poverty peace, etc. etc. has this

miserable constitution made all its revolutions; how many
more it may sustain, before its last and great one, God knows

like the rest of try species, I shall fence it off as long as

I can. I am advised now to try the virtues of the waters of
Banyars, and shall encamp like a patriarch with my whole
household upon the side of the Pyreneans this summer and
winter at Nice; from whence in spring I shall return home,
never, I fear, to be of service, at least as a preacher. I have
preached too much, my Lord, already ; and was my age to be
computed either by the number of sermons I have preached,
or the infirmities they have brought upon me, I might be

314 LATJEENCB STEKNE

truly said to have the claim of a Miles emeritus, and was there
a Hotel des Invalides for the reception of such established
upon any salutary plain betwixt here and Arabia Felix, I
would beg your Grace's interest to help me into it — —as it is,
I rest fully assured in my heart of your Grace's indulgence
to me in my endeavours to add a few quiet years to this

fragment of my life and with my wishes for a long and

happy one to your Grace, I am, from the truest veneration of
your character, — Your most dutiful servant, L. Sterne."

The cause to which Sterne assigned his physical collapse
cannot be taken at full value, though he had indeed innu-
merable sermons to his credit. He might surely have preached
on for another decade, but for Tristram Shandy and the
indiscretions that followed in its wake. His letter, for what
it said and for what it left unsaid, was most admirable as a
request that he be released from all further parish duties.
As he told his archbishop, he was going to Bagneres-de-Bigorre
at the foot of the French Pyrenees to try the waters and a
higher altitude. There was also another motive for the jour-
ney. Tristram Shandy could not continue much further on
tho lines it had been running. It had been Sterne's first
design, according to John Croft, to travel Mr. Tristram
Shandy over Europe, making under this disguise remarks and
strictures on the different peoples and governments, and clos-
ing with an eulogium on England and her superior constitu-
tion. Sterne's mind now began to revert to the original
design as modified by a sojourn abroad. From politics, his
interest had shifted to men and manners, of which he would
give a comic rendering. At Bagneres, he expected "much
amusement from the concourse of adventurers from all cor-
ners of the earth" ; and after exhausting Bagneres, it was his
plan to cross the Pyrenees and spend a week in Spain, where
he could collect in that time enough material "for a fertile
brain to write a volume upon". At the end of the spa season
in September, he was to return and winter somewhere in
southern France or in Italy, perhaps at Nice or at Florence,
almost anywhere except at Toulouse.

But the financial problem stared him in the face. To-
wards the end of March, he received from England a draft

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 315

for £130, which he turned over to his Paris banker. At best,
this remittance satisfied current debts and carried him through
the spring at Toulouse. Eager to set out on his journey, he
wrote to Foley on April 29, asking for a fortnight's credit
and explaining his method of payment. His agent at York —
Chapman, no doubt, — was to send up to London "a bill for
four score guineas", with orders that it be paid into the hands
of Foley's correspondent; and in the same way £20, pre-
sumably from Becket on the Shandys, was to be placed at his
London account. All this would take time. "Therefore",
said the request to the banker, "be so good as to give me
credit for the money for a few posts or so, and send me either
a rescription for the money, or a draught for it." Three
weeks passed with no reply; and then, on May 21, Sterne
sent a sharp note to Foley:

"It is some disappointment to me that you have taken no
notice of my letter, especially as I told you we waited for the
money before we set out for Bagnieres and so little dis-
trust had I that such a civility would be refused me, that we
have actually had all our things pack'd up these eight days, in

hourly expectation of receiving a letter. Perhaps my good

friend has waited till he heard the money was paid in London

— but you might have trusted to my honour that all the

cash in your iron box (and all the bankers in Europe put
together) could not have tempted me to say the thing that is
not. * * * Mr. B[ay] of Montpellier, tho' I know him not,
yet knows enough of me to have given me credit for a fort-
night for ten times the sum. * * * After all, I heartily forgive
you — for you have done me a signal service in mortifying
me, and * * * I am determined to grow rich upon it. Adieu,
and God send you wealth and happiness."

To this letter, Foley duly responded with an enclosure for
eighty or a hundred pounds. The real cause of the previous
delay, the banker averred, was no distrust of Sterne, but
merely distraction "with a multitude of business". Sterne
accepted good-naturedly the excuse, and in turn apologised
for his testy temper, saying that his grievance was mostly
imaginary, as he had in his pocket Mr. Ray's letter of credit
for £200, which he could use on a pinch. Three days after

316 LAURENCE STEENE

receiving Foley's remittance — on June 12, — the Sternes took
chaise for Bagneres, in company with Mrs. M[eadows], who
was going to another resort in the Pyrenees. The visit to
Bagneres, so far as we have any record of it, is almost an
intellectual blank in Sterne's life. Only one of his published
letters bears the superscription of that place; and that is
merely a request to Becket, dated July 15, 1763, to send him
a bill on Foley for whatever Shamdys may have been sold.
The pleasures of Bagneres, he said, however, the next year,
were not so "exalted" as those of Scarborough in the society
of "Lord Grranby and Co." The clue to his disappointment
is given in an unpublished letter from Montpellier later in the
year to a Mr. Mills, merchant in Philpot Lane, London.
From the moment he left Toulouse, Sterne never had a
moment's respite from ill-health, and subsequently the "thin
Pyranean air brought on continual breeches of vessels" in his
lungs.

The journey into Spain was obviously abandoned, though
we have no positive statement either way. His condition in
nowise improved, Sterne left Bagneres with his family as
early as the first of September — two weeks before the time
set for departure — and began a course of travels through
southern France in search of a comfortable place to camp in
for the next winter. There were times when he "risked",
according to the letter to Mills, "being taken up for a spy",
so suspicious was the aspect he bore in the character of a
wanderer, "now prying here, now there", as Pope would say.
The patriarch first retraced his steps to Toulouse, where he
was made happy by an order from Foley upon his correspond-
ent to pay Mr. Sterne fifteen hundred livres, should the gen-
tleman be in need of it. Sterne needed the sum and accepted
it as a "friendly act of civility", prompted by the generous
heart of his banker. A filled purse sent the Sternes on to
Montpellier, with stops and digressions all along the route.
This town, which they had passed through before, must have
pleased them for several reasons. Like Toulouse, it always
had its English colony in the winter; and it was pleasantly
situated on a slope whence were visible mountains and sea.
We may wonder, too, whether it ever occurred to Sterne that

A GENTLEMAN OF FBANCE 317

Master Rabelais took his Baccalaureate degree in Medicine at
the University of Montpellier and lectured there on Galen and
Hippocrates. To Montpellier were found, however, two
objections. Provisions there were "a third dearer than at
Toulouse", and the place had "a bad character * * * as the
grave of consumptive people". So the Sternes quickly broke
camp for Aix and Marseilles, making the usual long detours.
Aix, the capital of Provence, Sterne disliked because Toulouse
had already given him a surfeit of parliaments. Marseilles,
then a small town running about the old port, with wooded
hills for background, was attractive enough; but house rent
and cost of living were "enormous". "I could not take",
said Sterne, "the most miserable apartments under nine or
ten guineas a month", and everything else was "in propor-
tion". Balancing the pour and the contre for each of the
places which they had visited, Sterne decided upon Mont-
pellier; and posted directly thither with his household. His
purse was, of course, the determining factor in the account.
As for life and death, he said, "I love to run hazards rather
than die by inches".

The Sternes returned to Montpellier near the end of Sep-
tember. By taking apartments instead of a house — evidently
their plan — they should have lived as cheaply, though not as
luxuriously, as at Toulouse. Good lodgings on the hill,
accommodating two or three persons, were obtainable for three
guineas a month; and meals, without wine, cost a family of
that number about ten livres a day. The local markets, were
"well supplied with fish, poultry, butcher's meat, and game,
at reasonable rates". The ordinary wine of the district, if
one wished to drink it, was exceedingly cheap; while the
sweet wine of Frontignan, Yorick's favourite next to bur-
gundy, was made near Cette, the seaport of Montpellier.
The city was also famous for the distillation of pleasant
drams or liqueurs of various sorts. Sterne, if he managed
well, certainly had no cause for complaint.

A sojourn in Montpellier, though very like one at
Toulouse, afforded greater variety of scene and character.
"Four or five" English families stayed through the winter,
taking houses or apartments near one another for free inter-

318 LAUEENCE STEENE

course; but who they were we do not know, except that the
Hewitts seem to have migrated hither so as to be with their
friends. In the town resided also an English physician named
Fitzmaurice, "a very worthy sensible" practitioner, and a
"Mr. Eay, an English merchant and banker, * * * a gentle-
man of great probity and worth", who cashed the bills of his
countrymen, looked after their letters, and helped them over
all troubles. Sterne formed "a particular friendship", too,
with a man who was buying up the wines of the present
vintage to ship to London. Of his friend he wrote to the
Earl of Pauconberg and offered to send over a couple of
hogsheads as a present, provided his lordship would pay the
duty thereon. The inhabitants of Montpellier were happy
and prosperous, as a stranger might quickly see by a walk
through the narrow streets on a pleasant evening; for he
would observe all along his way "the better sort of both
sexes" sitting out on the stone seats by their doors, "convers-
ing with great mirth and familiarity", with here and there a
group singing a roundelay accompanied by the violin. To
the east of the town, by the gate of the citadel, was a long
esplanade, where people gathered every day to take the air,
and to the east was the Peyrou, a still more agreeable prom-
enade, whence one obtained a view of the Cevennes on the one
side and of the Mediterranean on the other. The beautiful
prospects and the pure elastic air attracted Sterne on first
sight, for they would be, he thought, temptations to take him
out of doors like the rest. At this time the town was gar-
risoned by two battalions, of which one was "the Irish regi-
ment of Berwick, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Tents",
who treated the English with great politeness and hospitality.
The social season opened with two concerts a week at the
theatre, called the Comectie, in the place of the same name;
and these entertainments were followed by a line of comedies
as at Toulouse, performed, it may be, by the identical com-
pany of strollers. "When Sterne berated Toulouse and Aix
as parliament towns which he could no longer endure, he
seems to have forgotten that Montpellier was one also. As
in the other provincial capitals, the season reached its height
at Montpellier when the states of Languedoc assembled at the

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 319

Hotel de Ville in gorgeous processions and ceremonies, which
Sterne called "a fine raree-shew, with the usual aecompany-
ments of fiddles, bears, and puppet-shews". Then came,
closing the winter, a succession of dinners and receptions
given by the governor and other high officials.

Now and then English tourists who were moving about
southern Prance through the winter, stopped at Montpellier
for a week or so, staying at the Cheval Blanc or going into
furnished lodgings. In November arrived Smollett the
novelist, all worked out and suffering from asthma, in com-
pany with his wife and two other English ladies. Though
on the way from Paris to Nice, he made the long detour to
lay the ease of his health before Dr. Antoine Pizes, a
climatologist of wide renown, "the Boerhaave of Montpel-
lier", as he was called. Pearing the results of a personal
encounter with the learned physician, who was reported
arrogant in deportment, Smollett consulted him by means of
a long letter in Latin, and received in reply, to his disgust, a
long letter in French. The novelist proved the physician's
diagnosis false, turned with loathing from the usual prescrip-
tion of bouillons and ass's milk, and savagely denounced the
"great lanthorn of medicine" as a knave and arrant humbug.
Unfortunately for Montpellier, a week's rain set in a few
days after Smollett's arrival, "leaving the air so loaded with
vapours that there was no walking after sunset, without being
wetted by the dew almost to the skin". There were, however,
some bright "days during Smollett's visit, and he said many
interesting things about the city, its sociable inhabitants and
their customs, upon which we have based largely our account
as a background to Sterne's life there.

The novelist was especially pleased at his reception by the
English residents, who made it a point to call upon all new-
comers. Did Sterne, like the rest, pay his formal respects to
the man whose review had slashed his jerkin year after year ?
We have no direct information on that point; but neither
Sterne nor Smollett could have let literary animosities inter-
fere with the etiquette prescribed for gentlemen. The
novelist, as he definitely stated, met and conversed with Mrs.

320 LAWRENCE STEBNE

Sterne,* who told him incidentally about a young consump-
tive among their friends, a Mr. Oswald of London, that came
over for the treatment of the celebrated climatologist. After
a month of it, Oswald said to the doctor one day: "I take
your prescriptions punctually ; but, instead of being the better
for them, I have now not an hour's remission from the fever

in the four-and-twenty. 1 cannot conceive the meaning of

it." The doctor replied that the reason should be plain, for
"the air of Montpellier was too sharp for his lungs, which
required a softer climate". "Then you are a sordid villain",
retorted the young man, "for allowing me to stay here till
my constitution is irretrievable." A few weeks later Oswald
died in the neighbourhood of Toulouse. On hearing this
dismal story, Smollett, who feared consumption for himself,
packed up and hastened to Nice.

The next month Sterne received a visit from a group of
his most intimate friends, and missed the sight of others
whom he would have been glad to see. In the previous sum-
mer, Tollot had taken the road with Thornhill and a younger
brother, both of London, and a Mr. Garland, who will be
remembered as one of the Demoniacs. From Paris, they went
into Belgium, where Garland left them at Brussels for home ;
while the others, after six weeks at Spa, journeyed leisurely
through Lorraine and Alsace into Switzerland, as far south as
Geneva, to call upon their friend Eousseau ; and thence they
turned west to Lyons for a circular tour of southern France
to Bordeaux and round to Paris again. At Lyons, they fell
in with Hewitt and Charles Turner, a sporting Yorkshire
squire of Kirkleatham near Skelton, who was taking his wife
to Aix for the winter. They all went south at the same time,
some by chaise and others by boat. At Avignon the party
divided, Hewitt for Montpellier and the rest for Aix. After
being snowed in at Aix for a fortnight, Tollot and the Thorn-
hills proceeded to Montpellier. They were delighted— Tollot
is the spokesman in a letter to Hall-Stevenson — to see again
the "bon et agreable Tristram", whom they found apparently
enjoying himself to the full, just as at Paris two years before.

* Smollett, Travels through France and Germany, in WorTcs. edited
by W. E. Henley, 128 (London, 1900).

A GENTLEMAN OF EEANCE 321

But they pitied him for the persecutions of a wife who
jealously followed him everywhere, causing him, they fancied,
many unhappy moments, which he bore nevertheless with
"the patience of an angel". In a word, the bonne dame
was from their point of view de trop. On learning from
Sterne that he was about to return to his "other wife",
meaning thereby his church at Coxwold, Tollot invited him
to his own hotel and table at Paris, and promised to conduct
him safely back to England with his other friends.*

When the company broke up in anticipation of a joyous
reunion at Paris, Sterne regarded himself in perfect health,
despite the attack of rain, mists, and snows. But as ever, he
was again deceived as to his real condition. On January 5,
1764, he began a letter to Foley, and, when halfway through
it, broke off to take a ride on the road towards Pezenas. His
beast proved to be "as unmoveable as Don Quixote's wooden-
horse " ; no motion was to be got out of him at all except by
continued lashings, which "half dislocated" Sterne's arm,
until his head was turned homeward; and then he struck
into a trot. The exertion on a chilly morning brought on a
fever, which confined Sterne to his bed for more than a week.
Not till the fifteenth was he able to finish the letter to his
banker, in which he said : " I have suffered in this scuffle with
death terribly — but unless the spirit of prophecy deceive
me — I shall not die but live — in the meantime, dear Foley,

let us live as merrily but as innocently as we can It has

ever been as good, if not better, than a bishoprick to me —
and I desire no other." During a month of convalescence,
Sterne was put through the customary course of treatment,
either under Dr. Fizes or under the local faculty who had
acquired the art of medicine from his practice. "My
physicians", he wrote on the first of February, "have almost
poisoned me with what they call bouillons refraichissants —
'tis a cock flayed alive and boiled with poppy seeds, then

pounded in a mortar, afterwards pass'd through a sieve

There is to be one crawfish in it, and I was gravely told it
must be a male one — a female would do me more hurt than
good." At the end of the period, the physicans informed

* Cooper, Seven Letters, 5.
21

322 LAURENCE STEBNE

him, just as Dr. Fizes had informed young Oswald, that "the
sharp air of Montpellier" would be fatal to him, if he
remained longer. "And why, good people", Sterne replied,
"were you not kind enough to tell me this sooner?" "While
still unable to be out, Sterne was particularly honoured by a
call from the Earl of Eochford, who was passing through
Montpellier en route to assume his duties as English Ambas-
sador to the Court of Spain. The two men who met here far
from home and conversed of their common friends, must have
been old acquaintances ; for Lord Rochf ord, besides being an
invariable subscriber to Yorick's books, was a lavish host in
the political set among whom Sterne moved when in London.
One may readily see how events were driving Sterne back
to England. Though his life may have been saved by his
first hurried journey to Paris, his health, on the whole, had
not been benefited by his long sojourn abroad. Indeed, it
probably would have been better for him had he never gone
to the south of France. From the first he fretted under his
inability to proceed with Shandy and thus lay another tax
— as he always expressed it — upon the public, so necessary to
the support of his family. Hopeless on this score, he sent
his books back to England the previous spring by way of
Bordeaux, addressed in care of Becket his publisher. Not
a chapter, so far as one knows, did he add to his work while
staying at Montpellier. His financial as well as his physical
condition had grown worse and worse. How he got through
the winter would be a puzzle, did we not know Sterne as a
skilful borrower. As early as November 24, 1763, he wrote
to Mills, the London merchant, requesting that he might draw
upon him to the extent of fifty pounds. As for surety, he
said "the whole Shandean family" will stand bound for the
capital; and as to immediate prospects, "you shall be paid
the very first money God sends". He was doubtless helped
out, as his letters would imply, by Foley, Ray, and other
friends with whom he was living "as brothers". Really
thrice a bankrupt, in purse, health, and intellect, Sterne
wisely decided to manage henceforth as best he could in
England, and to make another effort at Tristram Shandy in
the quiet of Coxwold.

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 323

In carrying out this design, Mrs. Sterne strangely stood
in the way. Whenever her husband suggested, as he had
been doing for a year, a return to England, she pleaded her
own welfare and her daughter's. Her rheumatism troubled
her less in France than at home, and Lydia should stay on
and complete her education. This opposition of wishes,
though not "as sour as lemon" was not, in Sterne's phrase,
"as sweet as sugar". Out of patience with her view of the
situation, Sterne finally told his wife, after his last illness at
Montpellier, that he was going back to Coxwold as soon as he
should be able, but that she might remain on with Lydia for
another two or three years, if she chose to do so. He clearly
saw the financial and social difficulties of a separate mainte-
nance, and agreed to it only with great reluctance when
brought to his wit's end. His wife and daughter were to go
to Montauban, north from Toulouse, for the present, and if
they wished, they might spend the summer at Bagneres. As
first planned, he was to return by way of Geneva, for a visit
doubtless with Eousseau and Voltaire, and "then fall down
the Khine to Holland", whence he could embark directly for
Hull and avoid the temptations of Paris and London. But
the generous offer of Tollot to share with him his apartments
and table at Paris evidently determined him to retrace his
steps by the old route. About the first of March, 1764, or as
soon as he received his Christmas remittance from Coxwold,
Sterne turned his face towards home "in high spirits * * *
except for a tear at parting with my little slut", his affection-
ate name for Lydia. "With his wife he left a hundred louis
for pocket money, and promised her two hundred guineas a
year.

Sterne traversed the road back to Paris without any inci-
dent he thought worth recording. On his arrival, in the
second or third week of March, he went directly to the Hotel
d'Entragues, in the Rue Tournon near the Luxembourg, where
were established Tollot and the Thornhills. With these "good
and generous souls", though Tollot was continually out of
sorts with the cold spring, Sterne lived "a most jolly non-
sensical life" for two months and more. Across the Seine,
in the Eue St. Nicaise, was their friend John Wilkes, who had

324 LAUEBNCE STEBNB

recently been expelled from the House of Commons. Like
many others, they regarded him as a martyr to free speech.
Sterne and Wilkes often met, and on one occasion formed ' ' an
odd party"* with the "goddesses of the theatre", at the
house of one Hope, whom the politician described as "a
Dutchman metamorphosed into an Italian" by long residence
in Rome and Venice. Much in their company, too, was
Stephen Fox, "dissipating the ill-got fleeting wealth of his
father". In the summer Lord Holland came abroad with his
younger son, Charles James Fox ; but that was too late for the
humourist to fall in with them. Every day Sterne saw also
Lawson Trotter, the Jacobite outlaw, who, despite exile, was
"eternally joyous and jocundissimus". To complete the
scene of Torick's immediate society, he was "smitten with
(the tenderest passion that ever tender wight underwent".
Once, twice, and thrice every day, when no other amusement
was at hand, Sterne trudged off to this woman's hotel for
sentimental converse. Before the spring was over, she went
to the south of France, and therewith ended the comedy.

It is to be presumed that Sterne renewed his intimacy with
French society, revisiting the salons of d'Holbach, Suard,
the Comte de Bissy, and the Prince de Conti, where he had
been so cordially received on his first coming to Paris. On
this point, however, the meagre correspondence covering the
period is silent. One misses greatly letters like those of two
years before to Garrick, with whom he lost touch during a
long absence. A letter to Garrick would doubtless have told
us about "the uncommon applause" with which Voltaire's
Olympie was greeted at the Comedie Francaise in March, and
about the decorations, which were "allowed to be the most
magnificent and striking that ever were exhibited on that
stage ".t The few letters that we have of these months relate
to family affairs or to the English colony. Two years before,
there was hardly a score of English gentlemen in Paris and
they were mostly birds of passage. Sterne, on account of his
literary prestige, then easily became the lion of the season.

* Letter of Wilkes to Charles Churchill, dated Paris, April 10, 1764,
in Wilkes's Correspondence with Churchill. — British Museum. Addi-
tional Manuscripts, 30,878.

^London Chronicle, March 29-31, 1764.

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 325

In the meantime all was changed. Since the peace, says
Horace Walpole, the way to Paris had become, "like the
description of the grave, * * * the way of all flesh". To
pay the expenses of the English who flocked thither, Foley
was receiving every month out of England £30,000 in remit-
tances.* An example for this display was set by the new
Ambassador, the Earl of Hertford, a man of great wealth and
generosity, who took for his residence the Hotel de Laurag-
nais,t a large and luxurious mansion near the Louvre. With
him was his son Lord Beauchamp, an amiable young man
whom everybody liked; and there still hovered about the
embassy Lord Tavistock, son of the Duke of Bedford who
had signed the articles of peace. Around these men centered
the most fashionable English society. Every English gentle-
man, on coming to Paris, called at the embassy, and Lord
Hertford returned the call, with invitations to dinners and
receptions and to his Sunday chapel at the Hotel de Laurag-
nais. No one was ostracised on account of political opinions.
Lawson Trotter, who dared not step foot in England, might
be seen almost any day at the embassy; and even Wilkes,
convicted of libel against his Majesty's government, was tol-
erated, though with maimed rites. Sterne, who was an
especial favourite, dined almost every week with the Ambas-
sador or Lord Beauchamp or Lord Tavistock.

Lord Hertford brought over with him as his Secretary,
though the appointment was not quite official, Hume, the
philosopher and historian. The choice seemed very odd to
everybody who did not know Hume thoroughly. Hume was,
if one likes to say it, "a coarse, clumsily built" Scotsman,
halting and heavy in speech ; and as to French, he sometimes
could never get, if at all embarrassed, beyond Eh bien! vous
voila. And yet beneath this rough exterior was a man
morally sound to the heart, of great and commanding intel-
lect, and in disposition as genial and pliable as the author of
Tristram Shandy. When Sterne reached Paris, Hume was
feeding upon the same ambrosia of which he himself had
grown sick two years before. "All the courtiers", wrote

* Walpole, Letters, edited by Toynbee, V, 345.

t London Chronicle, March 22-24, 1764.

326 LAURENCE STERNE

Hume to Adam Smith, "who surrounded me when I was
introduced to Madame de Pompadour, assured me that she
was never heard to say so much to any man."* A lady at
Court, it was rumoured, fell into immediate disgrace for ask-
ing who he was. With similar adulation Hume passed through
all the great houses, where no reception was complete without
him-. Chamfort, being asked on one occasion what had become
of the lion, replied: "I think he must be dead, for I have
seen him only three times to-day." His presence was de-
manded at masquerades and tableaux and pantomimes; and
at the theatre his big head "was usually seen between two
pretty faces".

Paris could manage only one great sensation a season.
In those days, it was either Sterne, Hume, "Walpole, or Gar-
rick, one at a time, never all together. This year Hume, who
had the start of Sterne by several months, easily overshadowed
him. A secondary role, nevertheless, had its honours, one of
which Sterne particularly cherished. On a Saturday after-
noon in March or April, while he was "playing a sober game
of whist with the Thornhills", Lord Hertford's messenger
appeared with a request that he preach, on the next morning,
in the chapel at the new embassy in place of Dr. James Trail,
the dull chaplain. Though Sterne had resolved never to
preach more, this invitation could not be refused. He broke
abruptly from his amusement, and set himeslf at once to the
task of writing a sermon, on a text that came into his head
at a flash without any consideration. The next morning the
little chapel was filled with "a concourse of all nations and
religions" — diplomats and officials from various embassies,
Roman Catholics, Protestants, deists and atheists. Hume
was there, and, it is said, d'Holbacb and Diderot. The text
which Sterne chose on the spur of the moment, was most amus-
ingly inappropriate for anyone except a jester; and yet the
preacher seemed unaware of the jest until all was over. His
theme, based on 2 Kings xx. 15, was the rebuke that Isaiah
administered to Hezekiah for exposing the treasures of the
royal palace to the Babylonian ambassadors, and the subse-

*lAfe and Correspondence of David Hwme, II, 169 (Edinburgh,
1846). 6

A GENTLEMAN OF FEANCE 327

quent prophecy that those treasures would some day be car-
ried away to Babylon. "Nothing shall be left, saith the
Lord."

The preacher related, with several fanciful enlargements,
the story of Hezekiah's illness and of the miracle that was
performed in his behalf. Instead of taking the Scriptures
simply, which say that a prince of Babylon sent presents and
messengers to Hezekiah to congratulate him upon his recovery,
Sterne conjectured a hidden reason for this friendly act of
courtesy. "As the Chaldeans", he said naively, "were great
searchers into the secrets of nature, especially into the motions
of the celestial bodies, in all probability they had taken notice,
at that distance, of the strange appearance of the shadow's
returning ten degrees backwards upon their dials; * * * so
that this astronomical miracle * * * had been sufficient by
itself to have led a curious people as far as Jerusalem, that
they might see the man for whose sake the sun had forsook
his course. ' ' From this point, the preacher went on to enquire
into the mistake that Hezekiah made in taking the Babylonian
ambassadors through the secret rooms of the palace. "Where
was the harm", Sterne asked, "in all this?" His conclusion
was that God, "who searches into the heart of man", saw in
Hezekiah pride and ostentation, not obvious perhaps to
mortal vision, though deserving in God's sight, of the severest
punishment. This analysis of Hezekiah's character led to
the generalisation that most men go abroad "armed inside
and out with two motives", one for the world and one for
private use — a favourite theory of Sterne's, upon which he
proceeded to draw many illustrations from the hypocrites he
had observed through his lifetime. Over against these ima-
ginary character-sketches was set, in concluding his discourse,
another and smaller group of the really good men and women
whom an ungenerous world persists in misunderstanding, as
if it would "rob heroes of the best part of their glory — their
virtue".

Sterne's honorarium was a dinner that Sunday evening
at the English embassy, to which were invited the most dis-
tinguished of the congregation. It was presumably on this
occasion that "a prompt French marquis", as related in the

328 LAURENCE STEENE

Sentimental Journey, mistook Hume for John Home, author
of the once famous tragedy of Douglas, whose names were
pronounced alike. Sitting beside the ambassador's secretary,
the marquis turned to him and enquired whether he was
Home the poet. "No, said Hume— mildly Tant pis, re-
plied the Marquis. It is Hume the historian, said another

Tant mieux, said the Marquis. And Mr. Hume, who is

a man of excellent heart, return 'd thanks for both." This,
however, was not the most amusing incident, if it occurred
then, of the evening. The real merriment in which all shared,
started when Hume began to quiz Yorick slily on Hezekiah
and the "astronomical miracle". Sterne, who — never a
hypocrite — believed implicitly in miracles, accepted the chal-
lenge, while the other guests looked on and listened with
delight to the droll combat. The story of the good-natured
passage at arms, when it got out, was magnified into a hot
dispute ; and Sterne, troubled by the idle rumours, set matters
right in one of his letters and no doubt in conversation.
"David", as he put it, "was disposed to make a little merry
with the parson, and in return the parson was equally dis-
posed to make a little mirth with the infidel; we laughed at
one another, and the company laughed with us both." Not
content with the mere statement of what occurred at Lord
Hertford's table, Sterne took the occasion afforded by his
letter to pay a most just tribute to the gentle temper of his
friendly antagonist. "I should be most exceedingly sur-
prized", he wrote, "to hear that David ever had an unpleas-
ant contention with any man; — and if I should be made to
believe that such an event had happened, nothing would
persuade me that his opponent was not in the wrong; for in
my life did I never meet with a being of a more placid and
gentle nature; and it is this amiable turn of his character
that has given more consequence and force to his scepticism
than all the arguments of his sophistry."* The amende
honorable was quite unnecessary.

Over-exertion resulted in another hemorrhage, which kept
Sterne in Paris longer than he had intended to stay. As he

* Original Letters of the late Reverend Mr. Laurence Sterne, 126-27
(London, 1788).

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE 329

turned his face once more towards England, for which he was
passionately longing, his mind also reverted to his family in
the south. On May 15, 1764, he wrote to Lydia, enumerating
the presents that had been sent to her, and giving his final
directions for her conduct in his absence:

"My dear Lydia * * * I acquiesed in your staying in
France — likewise it was your mother's wish — but I must tell
you both (that unless your health had not been a plea made

use of) I should have wished you both to return with me.

I have sent you the Spectators, and other books, particularly
Metastasio ; but I beg my girl to read the former, and only
make the latter her amusement. 1 hope you have not for-
got my last request, to make no friendships with the French
women — not that I think ill of them all, but sometimes women

of the best principles are the most insinuating nay I am so

jealous of you that I should be miserable were I to see you

had the least grain of coquetry in your composition. You

have enough to do — for I have also sent you a guittar — and
as you have no genius for drawing (tho' you never could be

made to believe it) pray waste not your time about it.

Eemember to write to me as to a friend in short, whatever

comes into your little head, and then it will be natural.

If your mother's rheumatism continues and she chooses to go
to Bagnieres^-tell her not to be stopped for want of money,
for my purse shall be as open as my heart. * * * Kiss your
mother from me, and believe me your affectionate L. Sterne."

CHAPTER XV

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON
TRISTRAM SHANDY: VOLUMES VII AND VIII

JUNE 1764^-APEIL 1765

Sterne set out from Paris for home on Thursday, the
twenty-fourth of May, in company with the Thornhills, and
Tollot, who was going over to England. He should have
reached London on the twenty-ninth; but there may have
been delays, for the earliest notice of his return was an
announcement in the postscript to Lloyd's Evening Post for
June 2-4, that "The Rev. Mr. Sterne, the celebrated author
of Tristram Shandy, is arrived from Paris, where he has long
resided for his health". The news was taken up and repeated
by other newspapers to an extent so unusual as to indicate
that Sterne's presence in London at this time came as a
surprise. During his long sojourn abroad, he had kept in
correspondence with very few of his friends in town. Even
Garrick, owing to a misunderstanding, had been dropped
after the first weeks in Paris two years before. The coolness
— if it may be called so — came about in this way. Sterne
wrote to Garrick once or twice from southern France, but
received no word in return. Garrick in fact duly replied,
but his letters miscarried. Each supposed that he was
"scalped" by the other, and so all letters between them ceased.
Public interest in Sterne had flagged terribly. Becket sold
few or no Shandys now, and other publishers were no longer
putting out imitations. Indeed the old rumour that Sterne
was dead had never been quite laid, as one may see from an
occasional letter to the newspapers through the year sixty-
three. Somebody, for instance, attacked his memory in
St. James's Magazine, a literary monthly conducted by
Robert Lloyd; whereupon a correspondent, in the issue for
July, 1763, vindicated Sterne's character by adapting Gray's

830

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 331

famous elegy to "The Decease of Tristram Shandy", towards
the close of which Sterne was conducted to the Blysian Fields
and placed on an embowered seat near Rabelais, Lucian, and
Cervantes.

The unexpected guest thus came upon London almost as
one returned from the dead. "While in town he stayed, along
with Tollot, with the Thornhills, who had a house in John
Street near Berkeley Square. As it was the tag end of the
season, most of Sterne's old friends were away. Garrick,
suffering, like Sterne, a temporary eclipse, was travelling
with his wife on the Continent. Foley, who was in London
on business, Sterne somehow missed, as if the two men were
"two buckets of a well", passing and drawing away from
each other. Three weeks were spent in London and the
environs, during which Sterne visited, though he gives no
names, such friends as he could find; among whom, we now
know, was Eeynolds, who granted him a sitting, as the
painter's Pocket-Book shows, on Monday, the eleventh of
June. In this portrait, overlooked by all writers on Sterne,
the humourist was drawn at half-length on canvas measuring
thirty by twenty-five inches. Wearing his wig and gown,
Sterne took his seat nearly facing Sir Joshua and leaned his
right elbow on a table, with the hand supporting his tired
head. It was a "very clever portrait * * * in a less uni-
form tone" than was usual with Reynolds, though lacking in
that extraordinary insight into Sterne's character displayed
by the painter four years before.*

After his rest in London, Sterne went down to York alone,
where he arrived late in June.t As he intended never to
preach again, he passed the next two months idly in and
about York. The races in the third week of August, accom-
panied by balls and concerts at the Assembly Rooms, to
which he subscribed this year, gave him an opportunity to
see many of his old Yorkshire and more distant friends,
including Hall-Stevenson, who came for the festivities.

* This portrait was given by Sterne to Edward Stanley, who be-
queathed it to his son-in-law, James Whatman, of Venters, Maidstone.
It was engraved by Wivell and by Nagle. — Graves and Cronin, A His-
tory of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Vol. Ill, 935, IV, 1418.

t York Cowant, June 26, 1764.

332 LAURENCE STEBNE

"Mr. Turner" and "Mr. Hall" both entered horses and both
lost. Tollot and Hewitt, who had returned to England to
look after his estates, were Sterne's guests. And there were
present, among his acquaintances of rank, the Marquis and
Marchioness of Eockingham, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Lord
Effingham of Surrey.*

As soon as the York races were over, Sterne went out to
Coxwold to look after his "few poor sheep in the wilderness".
Within a fortnight he grew uneasy of the quiet life, and
decamped to Scarborough, whither were gathering people of
quality for the spa season and the September races. Scar-
borough, at that time the most fashionable of the northern
watering-places, is beautifully situated on a lofty cliff over-
looking the German Ocean. The cliff, broken by a ravine,
runs along in a curve so as to form an immense crescent
enclosing a wide expanse of water. Down by the sea was
the spa house, with a long line of the newly-invented bathing
machines, stretching out in either direction over smooth,
hard sand, admirably adapted for promenading, driving, or
racing. Thence rose an amphitheatre of streets and build-
ings, tier above tier, clustering on the north beneath the
ruins of an old castle. At this romantic resort Sterne passed
three weeks with the Earl of Shelburne and the Marquis of
Granby, the politician and the soldier. He would have come
away, he said, marvellously improved by the air and waters,
had he not debilitated his strength as fast as it was gained,
by "playing the good fellow" too much with his noble
friends, whose pleasures were found rather exalted. His
sojourn at Scarborough was marred only by the absence of
Hall-Stevenson, who decided this year to drink the waters of
Harrogate.

After these sacrifices to the god of laughter, Sterne settled
down in his "philosophical hut" at Coxwold, where various
matters of business awaited him. The Archbishop of York,
not quite satisfied with James Kilner, the assistant curate of
the parish, had delayed his ordination until Sterne's return
from abroad. At the archbishop's request, Sterne enquired
further into the conduct and character of his curate, and

* York Cowant, August 28, 1764.

YOBKSHIBE AND LONDON 333

reported that "the man is well liked as a quiet and an honest
man, and withal as a good reader and preacher". "I believe
him", the humourist enlarged on his own part, "a good
scholar also — I do not say a graceful one— for his bodily-
presence is mean ; and were he to stand for Ordination before
a Popish Bishop, the poor fellow would be disabled by a
Canon in a moment." At this time, too, Stephen Croft was
taking the first steps towards enclosing and dividing Stilling-
ton Common and other waste lands, "containing in the
whole, one thousand four hundred acres, or thereabouts".
This project demanded Sterne's attention; for, as Vicar of
Stillington, he was "entitled to the Tythes of Wool and
Lamb, and to all the small Tythes and Vicarial Dues grow-
ing, arising, or renewing within the said Parish, and also to
two Messuages or Cottages there, and to certain Lands within
the said Fields and Ings".*

Presently a letter arrived from Mrs. Sterne, requesting
fifty pounds immediately, and complaining of her treatment
by Foley's correspondent at Montauban, who, in denying her
credit for small amounts, hinted as the reason that she was
separated from her husband for life. Sterne at once des-
patched a sharp letter to his Paris banker, in which he
branded as false the ill-natured rumour in circulation at
Montauban, and begged of him that Mrs. Sterne have credit
up to two hundred guineas and more, should she ask for it.
Sterne's heat was a bit Falstaffian, for he already owed his
banker nearly a hundred guineas on his wife's account, and
had to admit that a bill for fifty pounds could not be sent
over just then, as his finances were falling short most unex-
pectedly. There was good reason for complaint on Sterne's
part, though he kept silent, of the extravagance of his wife,
who had already received a hundred pounds since his return.
By good luck money became plentiful in a month or two,
thanks to Becket's advances on the next Shandys; and Mrs.
Sterne was put at her ease.

In the disposition Sterne made of his time, a scant six
weeks, shortened by these interruptions, was allowed for com-

* Stillington Enclosure Act, Private Acts of Parliament, 6 George
III, c. 16.

334 LAURENCE STEBNE

pleting Tristram Shandy, which had been commenced and
broken off at Toulouse. It was about the first of October
when he took up in earnest, though he had dallied with it in
the summer, the story of my uncle Toby and the widow "Wad-
man, with the manifest intent of running it through the
entire instalment of this year. But interest and fancy soon
languished, notwithstanding hard cudgelling of his brains, so
that by November he had arrived only at the end of one vol-
ume. Then he conceived the notion, it is a fair inference
from his letters, of fitting into Tristram Shandy the comic
version of his travels through France, already composed in
whole or in part as a separate work or a loose continuation.
To this end Sterne substituted Mr. Tristram Shandy for him-
self or Yorick as the name of the traveller, and let him recall
while at Auxerre an earlier tour with the elder Shandys and
Corporal Trim. This device for bringing the Shandy house-
hold over to the Continent has generally been regarded very
maladroit; but — besides the urgent call for something of the
kind, if there were to be two volumes this year — Sterne saw
a jest on the public, to whom he would give an opportunity,
afforded by no other book, of pursuing two journeys through
France at one and the same time. In order to lend a sem-
blance of unity to the whole, my uncle Toby's courtship of
the widow Wadman was put last, where it would give the
final impression. The adjustment completed in this curious
way about the middle of November, Sterne received a visit
from a London friend recovering from a serious illness,
with whom he went over to Skelton Castle for a week or ten
days with Hall-Stevenson and his garrison, before leaving for
London to try the public once more.

The seventh and eighth volumes of The Life and Opinions
of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman duly appeared from Becket's
press on Tuesday, January 22, 1765. Each volume bore on
its title-page a quotation from Pliny, likely through Burton :
Non enim excursus hie ejus, sed opus ipsum est, meant as a
sly apology for the inclusion of the travels ; and at the top of
the first numbered page of the seventh volume, the author
placed his signature as a guarantee that the wit and humour

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 335

were all his own. The price of the set was kept at four
shillings.

As the instalment was much slighter than any hitherto
put forth, Sterne had to accept a good deal of banter on the
score that he was amusing himself at the cost of the public.
Smollett's man on the Critical Review* likened the two tiny
volumes to "the invisible cock" which Corporal Trim paid
his money to see within the showman's box, though he knew
the thing invisible. And Suard, apropos of their appearance,
retold the story of the man who advertised that he would put
himself into a bottle before the eyes of his audience. On
the appointed day, the theatre was thronged with a credulous
multitude to behold the wonder; but the droll -carried away
their money and left the bottle as empty as the last two vol-
umes of Tristram Shandy, t

The jest of the journey through France was not very well
understood by the general public. As Sterne meant it,
this part of his book was "a laughing good-tempered satire
against travelling (as puppies travel) ". To gain the desired
effect, he let the thin narrative of his own journey, in which
he professed to see nothing and to experience nothing beyond
cross-accidents, run through all the customary details of the
towns visited, such as the plan and history of Calais, the
number of streets in Paris, and the wonders of Lyons — much
as one might find them in the guides of Piganiol de la Force,
which everybody thought indispensable to a trip abroad.
All the scenes and objects which make travelling a delight,
he playfully maintained, were not set down in the books ; for
none had told him that he would meet Janatone at Montreuil,
Old Honesty at Lyons, or Nannette on the plains of Lan-
guedoc. However much these episodes might be admired for
their charm and novelty, it was felt that the crude facts taken
from histories and guide-books were mere padding to stuff
out a six-penny pamphlet. And the story which Sterne
foisted upon his travels — the story of the Abbess of Andoii-
illets and the little novice Margarita, who divide the syllables
of two indecorous words between them to save a sin — brought

•January, 1765.

t Quoted in London Chronicle, April 16-18, 1765.

336 LAURENCE STERNE

out the current charge of indecency, with a hint that the tale
was "picked out of the common Parisian jest-books". In
Prance, however, where the words were employed by every
mule-driver, the episode was regarded as light and graceful
ridicule of the formal morality which disfigured the cloisters.
It far excelled, says Garat, Gresset's Ver-Vert, or the verse-
tale of a parrot who came to an untimely end among the
sisterhood at Nevers for repeating phrases caught on a jour-
ney down the Loire.*

The merriment against Sterne was long drawn out in the
Monthly Review for February, 1765, through a score of pages
in irony and burlesque. The reviewer represented himself as
going in company with Mr. Shandy on the entire tour through
Prance, and as quizzing him on the salient incidents by the
way, and on the sequel describing my uncle Toby's assault,
in military form, upon the heart of the widow Wadman.
Much sport was made of Death, the long-striding scoundrel
s dogging their heels, of the adventure with Old Honesty at
} Lyons, and of the "Story of the King of Bohemia and his
Seven Castles", which Trim and my uncle Toby lost somewhere
between them. "Many choice wits", it was said of Sterne,
"have excelled in telling a story, but none ever succeeded so
well in not telling a story, as the British Kabelais hath done in
this notable instance." The reviewer nevertheless appre-
ciated in the main, as Suard and everybody else were doing,
many "amazingly clever" anecdotes and episodes. After
hearing of Nannette and the vintage dance, he burst into
a series of exclamations: "Give me thy hand, dear Shandy!
Give me thy heart! What a delightful scene hast thou
drawn! What good humour! What ease! What nature!"
At length came the passage descriptive of the widow Wad-
man's lambent eye, which the critic could resist no more
than could my uncle Toby :

"It was not, Madam, a rolling eye a romping or a

wanton one nor was it an eye sparkling petulant or

imperious of high claims and terrifying exactions, which

* This poem had already appeared in English under the title of Ver-
Vert, or the Nunnery Parrot (Dodsley, 1759), and must have been as
well known to Sterne as to Hall-Stevenson, who imitated its style in
Crazy Tales.

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 337

would have curdled at once that milk of human nature, of

which my uncle Toby was made up but 'twas an eye full

of gentle salutations and soft responses^ speaking

not like the trumpet stop of some ill-made organ, in which
many an eye I talk to, holds coarse converse but whisper-
ing soft like the last low accent of an expiring saint

'How can you live comfortless, captain Shandy, and alone,

without a bosom to lean your head on or trust your cares

to?' "

The humour of the new volumes was quite sufficient to
reinstate Sterne in his former popularity. "Shandy sells
well", he wrote in the middle of March, and "I have had a
lucrative campaign here. " As in the old time, social engage-
ments, beginning moderately, thickened towards the end until
scarcely a moment could be stolen for letters to his family
and best friends. His enjoyment during the first months
was marred only by the absence of Garrick, who, in his long
tour abroad, had swung round to Paris, where he was being
overwhelmed with honours. But the actor's spirits were so
blighted by "a terrible malignant fever" while in Germany,
that it was uncertain whether he would ever return to the
stage. As soon as Sterne found out that Garrick was in Paris,
the old correspondence was renewed in full freedom. "I

scalp you ! my dear Garrick ! my dear friend ! — foul bef al

the man who hurts a hair of your head ! " So began one of
Sterne's letters, which drifted off into the recurring burden:
"Keturn, return to the few who love you and the thousands

who admire you. The moment you set your foot upon

your stage mark ! I tell it you by some magic, irresisted

power, every fibre about your heart will vibrate afresh, and as

strong and feelingly as ever Nature, with glory at her

back, will light up the torch within you and there is

enough of it left, to heat and enlighten the world these many,
many, many years. ' ' Frequently through the winter, Sterne
occupied his box at Drury Lane, taking along with him the
whole party where he dined, to see Powell, whom many
thought the equal of Garrick, though that was not Sterne's
opinion. "Powell! good Heaven!" he exclaimed, "give me
some one with less smoke and more fire There are who,

22

338 LAURENCE STERNE

like the Pharisees, still think they shall be heard for muck
speaking. Come — come away, my dear Garrick, and teach
us another lesson.*" Nor did Sterne forget Mrs. Garrick, who
had been likewise seriously ill. She had, it is said, "a real
regard" for Mr. Sterne, though she often censured his indis-
creet conduct. In recompense, Sterne addressed her as "the
best and wisest of the daughters of Eve", and declared
himself ready, after all the women he had seen, to "maintain
her peerless" against any champion.

In one of these delightful letters, dated March 16, Sterne
explained his plans for meeting the expense of another con-
tinental journey. "I am taxing the public", he told Garrick,
"with two more volumes of sermons, which will more than

double the gains of Shandy It goes into the world with

a prancing list de toute la noblesse — which will bring me in

three hundred pounds, exclusive of the sale of the copy

so that with all the contempt of money which ma fagon de
penser has every impress 'd on me, I shall be rich in spite of
myself: but I scorn, you must know, in the high ton I take

at present, to pocket all this trash 1 set out to lay a

portion of it in the service of the world, in a tour round Italy,

where I shall spring game, or the deuce is in the dice.

In the beginning of September I quit England, that I may
avail myself of the time of vintage, when all nature is joyous,
and so saunter philosophically for a year or so, on the other
side the Alps." The labour of gathering in all the polite
world for his Sermons, Sterne took under his own direction
and made it his sole business during the winter. Wherever
he dined, one may imagine him requesting the honour of
including the names of the guests; and he sent out, as we
know, many letters asking for the aid of friends in obtaining
subscriptions, that the great list might surpass all others in
number and brilliancy. Very characteristic of the letters
that have survived was one to Foley, concluding: "Pray

present my most sincere compliments to Lady H , whose

name I hope to insert with many others. As so many men

of genius furnish me with their names also, I will quarrel with
Mr. Hume, and call him deist, and what not, unless I have
his name too My love to Lord W . Your name, Foley,

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 339

I have put in as a free-will offering of my labours- your

list of subscribers you will send 'tis but a crown for six-
teen sermons Dog cheap ! but I am in quest of honour,

not money. Adieu, adieu. ' '

The successful season in town was broken for a few weeks
by illness, which sent Sterne, about the middle of March, to
the milder climate of Bath to recruit his strength. The
fashionable city of the hills, where congregated people of all
ranks from the nobility down to tradesmen and adventurers,
afforded ample scope for light diversion gossip and senti-
mental conversation in the pump-room looking out on the
great Roman bath; strolls through the parks and along
the parades, if one wished to take the air after drinking
the waters ; teas and chit-chat in the afternoon ; and a concert
or ball or theatre, much as one pleased, with which to end the
day. Sterne was welcomed to Bath by Lord Cunningham of
the Irish peerage, who invited him to his house and intro-
duced him to a company of "his fair countrywomen", with
whom the sentimentalist passed some of the happiest days
in his life. In describing the household to a London friend,
Sterne wrote: "There is the charming widow Moor, where, if
I had not a piece of legal meadow of my own, I should rejoice

to batten the rest of my days; and the gentle, elegant

Gore, with her fine form and Grecian face, and whose lot I
trust it will be to make some man happy, who knows the

value of a tender heart : Nor shall I forget another widow,

the interesting Mrs. Vesey, with her vocal and fifty other
accomplishments. ' '

Concerning the first two of these beautiful women over
from Ireland to set Yorick's heart aflame, our narrative can
say but little. Mrs. Gore must live, I fear, only for "her
fine form and Grecian face". "With Mrs. Moor, who had a
house of her own at Bath, Sterne kept up a long correspond-
ence, but none of their letters, if published, can now be surely
identified through the dashes. Like Mrs. Vesey, she was
doubtless a widow only in the sense that she came to Bath
without her husband. Mrs. Vesey, it is certain, was none
other than Elizabeth Vesey, the famous "Blue-Stocking", who
afterwards brought over her husband from Ireland, got him

340 LAURENCE STERNE

into Dr. Johnson's club, and established for herself a coterie in
rivalry with Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu's. At this time she had
to be content with her house at Lucan near Dublin and with
an occasional season in Bath and London. Her "spirit, wit,
and vivacity" quickly won Sterne's heart. "Let me ask you,
my dearest Mrs. Vesey", he was soon writing to her, "what

business you had to come here from Ireland or rather,

what business you have to go back again the deuce take

you with your musical and other powers could nothing

serve you but you must turn T. Shandy's head, as if it was

not turn'd enough already; as for turning my heart, I

forgive you, as you have been so good as to turn it towards

so excellent and heavenly an object "*

The sentimental friendship was never dropped, though
Mrs. Vesey received a sharp rebuke from the learned and
rather prudish Mrs. Carter for the intimacy. Sterne sub-
sequently frequented Mrs. Vesey 's "dear blue room" in Bol-
ton Row, and took her to Banelagh ; and when too ill for that,
he summoned a chair to convey him to her "warm cabinet",
that he might listen alone to her "gentle, amiable, elegant
sentiments", delivered "in a tone of voice that was originally
intended for a Cherub". On one occasion, when Sterne was
unable to leave his lodgings and seemed to be in his last
illness, Mrs. Vesey came over to Bond Street and sat by his
bedside the whole night, "performing every act of the most
friendly and pious attention". As he began to mend, she
came again, says Sterne, "in the form of a pitying angel,
and made my Tisan for me * * * and played at picquet
with me, in order to prevent my attempt to talk, as she was
told it would do me harm. * * * In my life did I never see

anything so truely graceful as she is, nor had I an idea,

'till I saw her that grace could be so perfect in all its

parts, and so suited to all the higher ordinances of the first
life, from the superintending impulse of the mind". Sterne
invited Mrs. Vesey to Coxwold, and they must have met by ap-
pointment at Scarborough two years later, when "the Sylph",
as she was called, came north to quiet her nerves by change
of air and water. In return for the compliment, Sterne

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 341

promised to visit her and other friends in Ireland, where he
had never been since childhood.

Pursuit of the dear "Blue-Stocking" has carried us for-
ward two or three years. To return to Bath, Sterne first met
there Gainsborough, then living in the newly-built Circus, a
showy amphitheatre of residences on the hill. The painter,
say those who knew him, detested books, but read Sterne and
wrote like him.* Sterne sat for his admirer; The portrait
has never been quite identified ; but a Gainsborough purport-
ing to be of Sterne hangs in the Peel Park Museum at
Salford. If really Sterne, it is a highly idealised portrait,
such as might be painted at a single sitting without much
study. The figure, drawn at half-length, is scrupulously
dressed, with short wig, and sleeves and front heavy with
costly lace. The left hand is concealed, while in the right
hand, almost buried in ruffles, a book lies open. A dreamy
face tending to the oblong, with full eyes and full lips, gives
the impression of soberness, almost of melancholy. The per-
plexing portrait may be Sterne's; for "Harlequin without
his mask", as Thackeray pnee said, "is known to present a
very sober countenance, and was himself, the story goes, the
melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go and see
Harlequin."!

Eeturning to London before the end of April, Sterne
"made a large company merry at Lady Lepell's table during
a whole afternoon", by a comic version of his adventures with
the Anglo-Irish at Bath. The Lady Lepell at whose table
Sterne sat was a daughter of the effeminate John, Lord Her-
vey, so severely satirised by Pope as "that mere white curd of
ass's milk". At the time of her marriage with Constantine
Phipps, afterwards Baron Mulgrave of New Koss, Ireland,
she was, says Walpole, "a fine black girl, but as masculine
as her father should be". Her birth and her rank easily
made her house the centre round which gyrated Anglo-Irish
society. Under the excitement of the occasion, Sterne aban-
doned himself to his wit, apparently forgetting that Lord

♦William Jackson, The Four Ages, 160 (London, 1798).

t The Gainsborough portrait is technically described by G. W. Ful-
cher, Life of Gainsborough, 219 (London, 1856). It was presented to
the Museum at Salford by Mr. Thomas Agnew.

342 LATJBENCE STERNE

Cunningham and Mrs. Vesey belonged to the same set. Some
umbrage was taken at his ridicule of their friends at Bath,
especially by Lady Barrymore, who told the story. Disturbed
by the incident, Sterne gracefully apologised for his sallies
of wit, saying that he himself was born in Ireland and that
he could never have intended ridicule of his "fair country-
women". "I did", it was admitted, "talk of them, but as
they would wish to be talked of, with smiles on my counte-
nance, praise on my tongue, hilarity in my heart, and the
goblet in my hand."

Never was Sterne more reckless in speech and in conduct
than this year. Perhaps it would not do to quote from an
unpublished letter* of his in reply to Mrs. Ferguson of
Bath, who had enquired of her friends in town whether
Tristram Shandy was a married man or no. There is really
no harm in the letter in which Tristram Shandy told the "dear
lady" that she must answer to her own conscience for the
question, but we can not speak with Sterne's freedom nowa-
days. To conclude, Sterne closed the season with an in-
discretion which has long lain heavily against him. The
incident has been often related, but with a mistake in time
and place, and with undue emphasis on the questionable char-
acter of the woman, slightly disguised in the printed cor-
respondence as Lady P . Among Sterne's acquaintances

was Hugh Percy, eldest son of the first Duke of Northum-
berland, a young man twenty-three years old. He appears
among the subscribers to Sterne's sermons as Lord Wark-
worth. After serving as an officer during the last years' of
the war with Prance, Percy was appointed colonel and aide-
de-camp to George the Third, and subsequently fought
bravely in the war with the American colonies, covering, for
instance, the retreat of the British from Lexington and Con-
cord. In the summer of 1764, he married Anne, daughter
of the Earl of Bute, who succeeded Pitt as Prime Minister.
From the first, the marriage, which finally ended in divorce,
did not prosper. Lady Percy quarrelled with her mother-in-
law, the old Duchess of Northumberland, and insisted upon
inviting her friends to call while Lord Warkworth was away.
'Morgan Manuscripts.

YOEKSHIEE AND LONDON 343

On one occasion, after many compliments doubtless, Lady-
Percy told Sterne that she would be glad to include him
among her favoured guests. Eemembering the invitation on
an April afternoon while on his way to dine in her neighbour-
hood with Mr. Cowper of Wigmore Street, he entered the
Mount Coffee-House, called for a sheet of gilt paper, and
wrote off a nonsensical letter to Lady Percy, asking if she
"would be alone at seven" and suffer him "to spend the
evening with her". She was directed to send her reply to
"Wigmore Street by seven o'clock. "If I hear nothing by
that time", said the billet-doux, "I shall conclude you are

better disposed of and shall take a sorry hack, and sorrily

jogg on to the play Curse on the word. I know nothing

but sorrow — except this one thing, that I love you (perhaps
foolishly, but) most sincerely." Though the conduct of Sterne
and Lady Percy was far from correct, it matters little whether
they passed the evening together or Sterne took a sorry hack
to Covent Garden, where Miss Wilford, a beautiful dancer,
was to make her debut in the regular drama.*

* The letter to Lady Percy has become one of the most famous
letters because of Thackeray's use of it in his lecture on "Sterne and
Goldsmith" in the English Humourists. In editions of Sterne since
1780, this letter has usually appeared among those for the last part of
April, 1767. Thackeray referred to it to show that Sterne was only
shamming his passion for Mrs. Draper — the Eliza of a series of letters
in the spring of 1767. But it is now known that Sterne was too ill at
that time to visit Lady Percy or anyone else. In 1766 he was abroad.
Hence the only year left for the letter is 1768 or 1765. If he cannot make
an engagement with Lady Percy, .Sterne says that he is going to Miss
******* 's benefit. No unmarried actress had a benefit on a Tuesday
in the spring of 1768 before March 18, the date of Sterne's death. But
on Tuesday, April 23, 1765, benefits were given to Miss Wright at
Drury Lane, and to Miss Wilford at Covent Garden. The seven stars
correspond to the letters in the name of Miss Wilford. — See Genest,
Eiatory of the Stage, V, 69; 75.

CHAPTER XVI

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON CONTINUED
SERMONS : VOLUMES III AND IV

MAY— OCTOBEB 1765

It was the twenty-third of April, as we may figure it out,
when Sterne wished to pay a visit to Lady Percy, whose ' ' eyes
and lips", he said, "have turned a man into a fool, whom the
rest of the town is courting as a wit". Two days later the
Garricks arrived from Paris and went directly to their
Hampton villa. Sterne at least saw them, hurried through
his business in town, and hastened home earlier than usual,
to prepare his sermons for the press in the ensuing Septem-
ber. At York he stayed some days with Hall-Stevenson, who
left him "bleeding to death" of a vessel in his lungs. "The
deuce take these bellows of mine !" Sterne wrote to the young
Earl of Effingham, ' ' I must get 'em stopped, or I shall never
have to persifler Lord Effingham again." The hemorrhage
which he thus dismissed carelessly, was nevertheless a warn-
ing that he must keep quieter than last summer, and be con-
tent to oscillate between York and Coxwold, with no thought
of Scarborough or Harrogate.

"When first seen in his retirement, he was sitting in the
summer-house of Shandy Hall, "heart and head" full of his
sermons. Near him lay a letter from a Mr. Woodhouse to in-
form him that he was in love. To draw himself out of the pen-
sive mood of the sermons, Sterne took up the letter for reply,
beginning with the value of the passion to a man of his own
temperament, an excellent commentary, in passing, on his
infatuation for Lady Percy. "I am glad", said the man of
large experience, "that you are in love — 'twill cure you at
least of the spleen, which has a bad effect on both man and
woman — I myself must ever have some dulcinea in my
head — it harmonises the soul — and in those cases I first

344

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 345

endeavour to make the lady believe so, or rather I begin

first to make myself believe that I am in love but I carry

on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally

'I 'amour' (say they) 'n'est rien sans sentiment'."

Sterne had just received, it appears, and replied to a
formal proposal for the hand of his daughter from ' ' a French
gentleman of fortune in France". The marquis, if we may
so call him, obtained Sterne's address from Foley's corre-
spondent at Montauban, and, without the knowledge of Lydia,
wrote to her father that he was deeply in love with her,
as a brief prelude to the enquiry: "How much can you give
her at present and how much at your death. ' ' The substance
of the parent's amusing reply, Sterne related for the benefit
of his friend "Woodhouse. "Sir", was Sterne's answer, "I
will give her ten thousand pounds the day of marriage —

my calculation is as follows she is not eighteen, you are

sixty-two there goes five thousand pounds then, Sir,

you at least think her not ugly — she has many accomplish-
ments, speaks Italian, French, plays upon the guittar, and as
I fear you play upon no instrument whatever, I think you
will be happy to take her at my terms, for here finishes the
account of the ten thousand pounds."

A letter came, too, from Mrs. Meadows, who had been an
intimate friend of the family at Toulouse. It was a "kind
epistle" to enquire after Yorick's health and to inform him
of her whereabouts since coming back to England. In apology
for delaying his answer, Sterne told her that so great a mis-
fortune had recently befallen him as to keep all concerns of
friendship at a distance: "You must know, that by careless-
ness of my curate, or his wife, or his maid, or some one
within his gates, the parsonage-house at Sutton was burnt
to the ground, with the furniture that belonged to me, and a
pretty good collection of books; the loss three hundred and

fifty pounds The poor man with his wife took the wings of

the next morning, and fled away this has given me real

vexation, for so much was my pity and esteem for him, that
as soon as I heard of this disaster, I sent to desire he would
come and take up his abode with me till another habitation
was ready to receive him but he was gone and, as I

346 LAUBENCE STEENE

am told, through fear of my persecution. Heavens! how

little did he know of me to suppose I was among the number

of those wretches that heap misfortune upon misfortune

and when the load is almost insupportable, still to add to the

weight! God, who reads my heart, knows it to be true

that I wish rather to share, than to encrease the burthen of

the miserable to dry up, instead of adding a single drop

to the stream of sorrow. As for the dirty trash of this

world, I regard it not the loss of it does not cost me a

sigh, for after all, I may say with the Spanish Captain, that I
am as good a gentleman as the king, only not quite so rich."

It is interesting to observe here how Sterne's pity and
humour, pen once in hand, helped him over the hardest rubs
of fortune. The frightened curate who ran away was the
Rev. Marmaduke Collier, who had been in charge of Sutton
since 1760. He was evidently soon induced to come out of
hiding, for the baptisms, as recorded in the parish registry,
appear in his hand throughout 1765. But he was re-
placed the next year by Launcelot Colley, who, after taking
the parish duties for some months, was duly licensed to the
cure on October 20, 1766. The recommendation was made by
Sterne at an annual salary of £38.*

But to return to the letter to Mrs. Meadows. In recom-
pense of her favour, Sterne invited her to Coxwold, and
offered, if she were going abroad again, to escort her on the
way. "Shall I expect you here", ran the alluring invitation,
"this summer? 1 much wish that you may make it con-
venient to gratify me in a visit for a few weeks 1 will

give you a roast fowl for your dinner, and a clean table-cloth
every day — and tell you a story by way of desert — in
the heat of the day we will sit in the shade — and in the
evening the fairest of all the milk-maids who pass by my

gate, shall weave a garland for you. If I should not be so

fortunate, contrive to meet me [in London] the beginning

of October 1 shall stay a fortnight after, and then seek

a kindlier climate. This plaguy cough of mine seems to

gain ground, and will bring me to my grave in spight of me

but while I have strength to run away from it I will

* Institutions of the Diocese of York.

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 347
I have been wrestling with it for these twenty years past

and what with laughter and good spirits, have prevented its

giving me a fall but my antagonist presses closer than

ever upon me and I have nothing left on my side but

another journey abroad A-propos are you for a scheme

of that sort? if not, perhaps you will accompany me as far
as Dover, that we may laugh together on the beach, to put

Neptune in a good humour before I embark God bless

you, my dear Madam, and believe me ever your's."

As the time for Sterne's departure on his foreign tour was
approaching, the recurrent trouble with his lungs took him
frequently to York for change, and perhaps to consult Dr.
Dealtry. "I am going to York", he again wrote to Wood-
house late in the summer, "not to walk by the side of the
muddy Ouse, but to recruit myself of the most violent spitting
of blood that ever mortal man experienced; because I had
rather (in case 'tis ordained so) die there, than in a post-
chaise on the road." Among his friends in the city whom
envy still spared him, was Marmaduke Fothergill, to whom
he used to go for advice in the Sutton period. One day
Fothergill told him of a droll encounter with an apothecary
in. Coney Street ; and Sterne, suppressing names, retold the
story for the benefit of Mr. Woodhouse: "A sensible friend
of mine, with whom, not long ago, I spent some hours in con-
versation, met an apothecary (an acquaintance of ours)

the latter asked him how he did ? "Why, ill, very ill — I have
been with Sterne, who has given me such a dose of Attic salt

that I am in a fever Attic salt, Sir, Attic salt! I have

Glauber salt 1 have Epsom salt in my shop, &c. Oh ! I

suppose 'tis some French salt 1 wonder you would trust

his report of the medicine, he cares not what he takes
himself."

As usual, Sterne was in for the August races, expecting
to meet by appointment Lord Effingham, and Colonel John
Blaquiere, afterwards Chief Secretary for Ireland, both of
whom were most congenial companions. With them doubt-
less he drove out to the race-course, where occurred an inci-
dent which connects him agreeably with Elizabeth Graeme,
a romantic young woman from the colonies. Miss Graeme

348 LAURENCE STERNE

was a daughter of Thomas Graeme, physician and collector
of customs at Philadelphia, and a granddaughter on her
mother's side of Sir "William Keith, a former governor of
Pennsylvania. At the outbreak of the Revolution, she mar-
ried a young Scotsman of Philadelphia named Ferguson,
who accepted a commission in the British Army. It was she
who bore Duche's famous letter to General Washington, urg-
ing that he persuade congress to rescind "the hasty and ill-
advised" Declaration of Independence, and that, failing in
the effort, he negotiate directly for his country at the head
of the army. Back in 1765, when she went to England
for her health, Miss Graeme was a clever young woman,
twenty-five years old, fond of moralising in verse and of
entering into Platonic friendships. She figures as the
"Laura fair" in the verses of Nathaniel Evans, the colonial
poet. In her leisure, she translated Telemaque into English
heroic verse, and transcribed, it is said, the entire Bible, that
it might be impressed upon her memory. Of her visit abroad,
she felt most honoured by her gracious reception at Court
and by an introduction to Laurence Sterne, which came about
by chance. With a party of friends she attended the York
races, where she took, it happened, a seat upon the same stage
with Sterne. "While bets were making", says the narrative,
"upon different horses, she selected a small horse that was
in the rear of the courses as the subject of a trifling wager.
Upon being asked the reason for doing so, she said, 'the race
was not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong'.
Mr. Sterne, who stood near her, was struck with this reply,
and turning hastily toward her, begged for the honour of an
acquaintance. They soon became sociable, and a good deal
of pleasant conversation took place between them, to the
great entertainment of the surrounding company."*

All summer Sterne was busy, so far as he was able to
work at all, with his sermons. He kept his face, as he
phrased it, turned towards Jerusalem. During the revision
he must have written many letters asking for subscriptions
and acknowledging favours ; of which two to Foley have long

* M. Katherine Jackson, Outlines of the Literary History of Penn-
sylvania, 96-97 (Lancaster, Pa., 1906).

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 349

been known; and two others have come to light. One was
to Lord Effingham to thank him, "as well as the amiable
comtesse voire, chere mere, for the honour of her name" ; while
the other, never yet published, was addressed to Thomas
Hesselridge, Esq., of London, a gentleman in the service of
Sir "William Maynard, the fourth Baronet. It ran : —

"My dear dear Sir "Tork' July 5"

' ' I made a thousand enquiries after you all this last winter

and was told I should see you some part of it, in town

pray how do you do? and how do you go on, in this silly
world? Have you seen my seven and eight graceless chil-
dren? but I am doing penance for them, in begetting a

couple of more ecclesiastick ones which are to stand

penance (again) in their turns in Sheets about the

middle of September they will appear in the Shape of

the third and fourth volumes of Yorick. These you must
know are to keep up a kind of balance, in my Shandaic
character, and are push'd into the world for that reason by
my friends with as splendid and numerous a List of Nobility
&c — as ever pranced before a book, since subscriptions came

into fashion -I should grieve not to have your name

amongst those of my friends — and in so much good com-
pany as it has a right to be in so tell me to set it down

— and if you can — Lord Maynard 's 1 have no design,

my dear Hesselridge, upon your purse — 'tis but a crown
— but I have a design upon the credit [of] Lord Maynard 's
name — and that of a person I love and esteem so much as
I do you. If any occasions come in your way of adding three
or four more to the list, your friendship for me, I know will
do it.

" N.B. You must take their crowns — and keep them

for me till fate does the courtesy to throw me in your way

This will not be, I fear, this year — for in September, I

set out Solus for Italy — and shall winter at Rome and
Naples. L'hyvere ti Londres ne vaut pas rien, pour les
poumones — a cause d'humidite et la fume dont I'aire est

chargee Let me hear how you do soon and believe me

ever your devoted and affectionate friend and wellwisher

"L. Sterne"

350 LAURENCE STEENE

If all the letters sent forth from Shandy Hall were as
gay and courteous as this one, we may easily understand
their success with the world of fashion. Very graphic was
the metaphor of the prancing steed, which was also worked
into letters to Garrick and to Foley, and most likely into all
the rest. The jest of saying that his sermons were to stand
in sheets for Tristram Shandy, lay in the custom, still sur-
viving at York in Sterne's day, of requiring one guilty of a
grave sin to do penance by standing, with a sheet thrown
over his head, on the steps of the cathedral. Mr. Hesselridge,
almost needless to say, forwarded his subscription along with
Sir "William's. The splendid list, when completed, contained
six hundred and ninety-three names, thus outnumbering the
subscribers. to the sermons of 1760 by a comfortable margin.
Sterne's Yorkshire neighbours, even his old enemy, Philip
Harland, were mostly there, as much as to say that they liked
Yorick the preacher if not Yorick the author of Tristram
Shandy; and there, too, were hosts of friends among the
gentry and nobility with whom Sterne had associated in
London and at watering-places. To count the stars in the
list would be but to enumerate all the great families of the
kingdom; while France contributed to the roll of honour
the names of Diderot, d'Holbach, Crebillon, and Voltaire.

Sterne was in London with his sermons the first week in
October, somewhat later than he had at times expected. It
was then arranged that he should set out at once on his
journey, and leave their publication to Becket. This is the
only instance in which Sterne did not superintend in person
his books through the press. But in this case, his presence
in London was hardly necessary. The lights were all pricked
in, and the array of subscribers assured the sale of a large
edition. On the financial side, Becket was quite willing to
make advances, so that, including royalties and the bills
brought up from York, Sterne was able to leave with him
£600, upon which Panchaud and Foley might draw at sight,
according as Sterne or his wife should make it expedient.
Everything was thus settled for a long absence. For good
reasons Becket delayed publication until the opening of the
London season. The two volumes, numbered' three and four,

YOBKSHIBE AND LONDON 351

as they appeared on Tuesday, January 21, 1766,* bore the
old title for which Sterne had been censured: The Sermons
of Mr. Yorich, which was followed by a table of contents, the
old sub-title "Sermons by Laurence Sterne", etc., and "Sub-
scribers Names". Sterne wrote a preface, but decided upon
reflection that it would be better to let the sermons speak
for themselves without apology. Along with their publica-
tion, a scribbler, who knew that no Shandys were intended
by the author this year, favoured the public with a spurious
sequel to my uncle Toby's courtship, which the reviewers
thought admirable, if not genuine.

The new volumes contained only twelve sermons, instead
of sixteen as planned in the summer. Among them were four
that have been already described, to wit : the sermon at Cox-
wold on the coronation of George the Third, the charity ser-
mon at the Foundling Hospital, the portrait of Hezekiah,
and "The Abuses of Conscience", which had been published
locally as a pamphlet and afterwards inserted in Tristram
Shandy. To the last sermon, which closed the instalment,
Sterne prefixed an advertisement asking pardon for its
reappearance and for making the public "pay twice actually
for the same thing".

"But it was judged", Sterne went on to say, "that some
might better like it, and others better understand it just as
it was preached, than with the breaks and interruptions given
to the sense and argument as it stands there offered to the
world.

"It was an Assize Sermon, preached in the Cathedral
Church at York, and wrote by the same hand with the others
in these four volumes, and as they are probably the last
(except the sweepings of the Author's study after his death)
that will be published, it was thought fit to add it to the
collection, — where moreover it stands a chance of being read
by many grave people with a much safer conscience.

"All the Editor wishes, is, That this may not after all,
be one of those many abuses of it set forth in what he is now
going to read."

* The sermons were entered on this day at Stationers' Hall by
Becket for himself and De Hondt.

352 LAURENCE STERNE

Though a few more good sermons remained in manuscript
at Shandy Hall, the twelve that Sterne picked for publica-
tion were in his opinion the best. Of the eight about whose
history we know little or nothing, most were doubtless old
sermons, recast or stretched out for the closet, while two or
three, like "The Prodigal Son", may have been prepared
solely for the press. Again Sterne pleased and edified his
public as much as six years before. The reviews took him
up and ran through the volumes with long quotations; and
for weeks an abridged sermon by Parson Yorick held the
place of honour in the newspapers. No longer was any inde-
corum discovered in his assumed name of the king's jester;
and except for the mild censure of a flight of fancy here and
there as too free for the pulpit, everybody admired and spoke
out in praise of the gentle, generous heart of Yorick.

Strictly orthodox in those rare instances where he touched
upon points of doctrine, Sterne opened, as was his way, the
scroll of Biblical characters and adorned them with fresh
reflections. His readers were treated to a history of religions,
in which were brought out the advantages of Christianity
over Greek paganism; they were warned against all manner
of pride — of birth, wealth, learning, and beauty — as unsocial
vices, and exhorted to practise the humility of their Master.
"With the beautiful woman, proud of her loveliness, Sterne
was less severe than with the rest. "And yet", concluded

the moralist, "when the whole apology is read, it will be

found at last, that Beauty, like Truth, never is so glorious

as when it goes the plainest. Simplicity is the great friend

to nature, and if I would be proud of anything in this silly
World, it should be of this honest alliance." The old
harangues against the Church of Rome fell out of the new
volumes, save for survivals that were allowed to stand, such
as the sermon on conscience, and the definition of Popery,
before quoted, as "a pecuniary system, welt contrived to
operate upon men's passions and weakness, whilst their
pockets are o 'picking". In place of Roman Catholics, the
Methodists came in for occasional censure on account of their
spiritual pride — their professed illuminations and extra-
ordinary experiences, which were described as merely me-

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 353

chanical disturbances of disordered understandings. As
in his first volumes, Sterne sometimes went to Hall or to
Tillotson for a start, but all was modernised to the delecta-
tion of his audience.

It was just this power to depict as modern types striking
characters in Scripture, accompanied with the author's own
personal remarks and opinions, that makes Sterne's sermons
still readable. Take for instance his Shimei. It is related
that David, after his son Absalom rose against him, fled
from Jerusalem for safety. "While he was passing by Mount
Olivet, Shimei, of the house of Saul, came forth and cursed
David; "and threw stones and cast dust at him". When
Absalom was vanquished and David returned to Jerusalem
in peace, Shimei was the first man to greet him. Sterne,
well knowing that nobody cared anything about the blood-
feud existing between the Benjamite and Israel, which
explains in a clause the conduct of Shimei, easily modified
the story so as to make out of David's railer a mean and
abject time-server, such as he had seen with his own eyes.

"0 Shimei!" the preacher exclaimed after relating his
history, "would to heaven when thou wast slain, that all thy
family had been slain with thee; and not one of thy resem-
blance left! but ye have multiplied exceedingly and replen-
ished the earth; and if I prophecy rightly — ye will in the

end subdue it. There is not a character in the world

which has so bad an influence upon the affairs of it, as this
of Shimei: * * * Oh! it infests the court — the camp —

the cabinet — it infests the church go where you will

in every quarter, in every profession, you see a Shimei fol-
lowing the wheels of the fortunate through thick mire and
clay. * * * Shimei is the barometer of every man's fortune;
marks the rise and fall of it, with all the variations from
scorching hot to freezing cold upon his countenance, that

the smile will admit of. Is a cloud upon thy affairs? —

see — it hangs over Shimei 's brow Hast thou been spoken

for to the king or the captain of the host without success?

look not into the court-kalendar — the vacancy is fill'd

up in Shimei 's face Art thou in debt? — ■ — tho' not to

354 LAURENCE STERNE

Shimei — rio matter — the worst officer of the law shall not be
more insolent."

In a similar way Jacob became under Sterne's hand the
type of thousands who lament, when they see the end of life
approaching, that their days have been few and evil. Most
of the patriarch's misfortunes were shown, with much
ingenuity, to have resulted from mistaken views on the man-
agement of a family, from a "parental partiality or paren-
tal injustice", as common in England as it ever was in the
East. There were several hard places in Jacob's career to
slip over on this theory, but Sterne brushed away all obsta-
cles. It is true, he admitted in a most difficult analogy, that
no young man could be tricked now-a-days into marrying a
Leah, instead of a Eachel, in just the way that Laban tricked
Jacob. "But the moral of it is still good; and the abuse
with the same complaint of Jacob's upon it, will ever be
repeated, so long as art and artifice are so busy as they are
in these affairs. Listen, I pray you, to the stories of the

disappointed in marriage: collect all their complaints:

hear their mutual reproaches; upon what fatal hinge do

the greatest part of them turn? "They were mistaken in

the person.' Some disguise either of body or mind is seen

through in the first domestic scuffle; some fair ornament

— perhaps the very one which won the heart — the orna-
ment of a meek and quiet spirit, falls off; It is not the

Rachel for whom I have served, Why hast thou then

beguiled me? * * * When the night is passed, 'twill ever be
the same story, And it came to pass, behold it was Leah."

For the ills that befell Jacob at his marriage and before
and after it, Sterne expressed pity ; but it was the pity he felt
for all "splenetic and morose souls" who do not take life as
they find it. "If there is any evil", he said, "in this world,

'tis sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, —

of health, — of coronets and mitres, are only evil, as they

occasion sorrow; take that out — the rest is fancy, and

dwelleth only in the head of man." And as for himself,
though sickness and death pressed upon him, his prayer had
ever been:

"Grant me, gracious God! to go chearfully on, the road

YORKSHIRE AND LONDON 355

which thou hast marked out ; 1 wish it neither more wide

or more smooth: continue the light of this dim taper

thou hast put into my hands :- 1 will kneel upon the

ground seven times a day, to seek the best track I can with it

and having done that, I will trust myself and the issue

of my journey to thee, who art the fountain of joy, and

will sing songs of comfort as I go along."

Very curious was Sterne's analysis of the character of
Felix, who, though convinced of Paul's innocence, would
nevertheless not release him because disappointed of a bribe.
Sterne quickly hit upon the Roman governor's ruling passion
of avarice, but elaborated and explained it after an entirely
new fashion. Paul's well-known saying that the love of
money is the root of all evil, was flatly contradicted. Shift-
ing the point of view, Sterne held that "the love of money is
only a subordinate and ministerial passion, exercised for the
support of some other vices; and 'tis generally found, when
there is either ambition, prodigality, or lust, to be fed by it,
that it then rages with the least mercy and discretion; in
which cases, strictly speaking, it is not the root of other evils,

but other evils are the root of it". And so it was in'

Felix's case. To pass by ambition, Sterne expressed surprise
that none of the commentators had fully weighed the in-
fluence upon the Roman procurator of his mistress Drusilla,
who "had left the Jew her husband, and without any pre-
tence in their law to justify a divorce, had given herself up
without ceremony to Felix, * * * a character, which might
have figured very well even in our own times". Drusilla,
Sterne would suggest, feeling her guilt, instigated Felix
against Paul, so that it was well the Apostle suffered no more,
since "two such violent enemies as lust and avarice were
combined against him".

More curious still was the sermon on "The Levite and
his Concubine", which the Monthly Review thought wore
"too gay an aspect" for the pulpit. The sermon was prob-
ably never preached ; and yet it contained nothing that could
have disturbed the eighteenth century. At the outset, Sterne
was very careful to make clear that in the Jewish economics
the concubine was essentially a wife; that concubinage was

356 LAUEENCE STEENE

practised by Solomon, who however rather abused his privi-
leges under the law; and that, if the Levite needed any
further justification for his one concubine, it should be
remembered that there was no king in Israel at the time.
So much, declared the preacher, might be said for the Levite,
if one looked for explanations; but for himself he was con-
tent to rest the case with nature:

"For notwithstanding all we meet with in books, in many
of which, no doubt, there are a good many handsome things
said upon the sweets of retirement, &c. . . . yet still, -'if is
not good for man to be alone'. * * * In the midst of the
loudest vauntings of philosophy, Nature will have her yearn-
ings for society and friendship. * * * Let the torpid Monk

seek heaven comfortless and alone God speed him! For

my own part, I fear, I should never so find the way: let me
be wise and religious — but let me be Man: wherever thy
Providence places me, or whatever be the road I take to get

to thee give me some companion in my journey, be it

only to remark to, How our shadows lengthen as the sun
goes down; to whom I may say, How fresh is the face of
nature! How sweet the flowers of the field! How delicious
are these fruits!"

With good taste, Sterne stopped short of the horrible
catastrophe as related in Scripture, and in Bishop Hall, who
was followed in places very closely; and pieced out his dis-
course with a few remarks on "the rash censurers of the
world", who set up a "trade upon the broken stock of other
people's failings, perhaps their misfortunes". "Cer-
tainly there is a difference", he told crabbed satirists finely
with reference to his own art, "between Bitterness and Salt-
ness, — that is, — between the malignity and the festivity

of wit, the one is a mere quickness of apprehension, void

of humanity, — and is a talent of the devil; the other comes
from the Father of spirits, so pure and abstracted from per-
sons, that willingly it hurts no man : or if it touches upon an
indecorum, 'tis with that dexterity of true genius, which
enables him rather to give a new colour to the absurdity, and

let it pass. He may smile at the shape of the obelisk

raised to another's fame, but the malignant wit will level

YOEKSHIEE AND LONDON" 357

it at once with the ground, and build his own upon the
ruins of it. ' '

And finally we have Sterne where everybody should like
to see him — in a sermon on the Prodigal Son, a theme which
invited him to give loose rein to all the tender emotions in
the train of pity and mercy, up to the climax where the
preacher declared that the joy and riot of the kindly affec-
tions was but "another name for religion". Without re-
straint, Sterne let his fancy play with the parable, reviving,
with all sorts of imaginary details, the remonstrance of the
father against the rash enterprise of his son, the spendthrift's
parting with his father and elder brother by the side of
"camels and asses loaden with his substance", his varied life
in many lands, until a mighty famine drove him back to his
father's roof, and the fatted calf was killed, and the pavil-
lion was lighted up for the dance and wild festivity. Of
course, Sterne's graphic and pathetic pictures, flowing on in
a well-ordered series, had little warrant in the brief narrative
of St. Luke; but as literature the sermon was all the better
for that. It was perhaps all the better, too, for his weaken-
ing, almost losing, the moral of the parable by the zest with
which he related the prodigal's experiences at Ninevah and
Babylon. The young man, his substance all wasted, has
decided to return to his father and beg for forgiveness; and
thereon says the preacher :

"Alas! How shall he tell his story? Ye who have trod
this round, tell me in what words he shall give in to his

father, the sad Items of his extravagance and folly? The

feasts and banquets which he gave to whole cities in the

east, the costs of Asiatick rarities, and of Asiatick

cooks to dress them the expences of singing men and sing-
ing women, the flute, the harp, the sackbut, and of all

kinds of musick the dress of the Persian courts, how

magnificent! their slaves, how numerous! their chariots,

their horses, their palaces, their furniture, what immense
sums they had devoured ! what expectations from strang-
ers of condition! what exactions! How shall the youth

make his father comprehend, that he was cheated at Damascus
by one of the best men in the world; that he had lent a

358 LAURENCE STERNE

part of his substance to a friend at Nineveh, who had fled

off with it to the Ganges; that a whore of Babylon had

swallowed his best pearl, and anointed the whole city with

his balm of Gilead; that he had been sold by a man of

honour for twenty shekels of silver, to a worker in graven

images; that' the images he had purchased had profited

him nothing; that they could not be transported across

the wilderness, and had been burnt with fire at Shusan;

that the apes and peacocks, which he had sent for from
Tharsis, lay dead upon his hands ; and that the mummies had
not been dead Jong enough, which had been brought him

out of Egypt: that all had gone wrong since the day he

forsook his father's house."

No one except Sterne could have imagined those romantic
details of a spendthrift; or, had he done so, have ventured
to put them into a sermon. But a greater surprise follows.
Having brought the prodigal home and set the wine flowing,
the man of the world proceeded to modernise the parable by
offering "some reflections upon that fatal passion which led

him, and so many thousands after the example, to gather

all he had together, and take his journey into a far country"

some observations, in short, upon the grand tour for

which he himself was preparing. The desire for travelling
on the Continent, the preacher held, was in no way bad, con-
sidered by itself. "Order it rightly, the advantages are
worth the pursuit; the chief of which are — to learn the
languages, the laws and customs, and understand the govern-
ment and interest of other nations, — to acquire an urbanity
and confidence of behaviour, and fit the mind more easily

for conversation and discourse; to take us out of the

company of our aunts and grandmothers, and from the
track of nursery mistakes; and by shewing us new objects,
or old ones in new lights, to reform our judgments."

But few or none, said Sterne, of the young Englishmen
who swarm the capitals of Europe bring back any part of
this cargo. If they go out alone, "without carte, — without

compass" they escape well if they return only as naked

as when they left home. If you place your son in charge of
a scholar to act as bear-leader, "the upshot will be generally

TOEKSHIEE AND LONDON 359

* * * that the unhappy youth will have the tutor to carry,
— and not the tutor to carry him". You may choose for
your son, not a scholar read in Greek and Latin, but a man
"who knows the world, * * * who has been employed on
such services, and thrice made the tour of Europe, with suc-
cess, that is, without breaking his own, or his pupil's

neck". From such a guide, the young man "will learn the
amount to a halfpenny, of every stage from Calais to Rome ;

he will be carried to the best inns, instructed where

there is the best wine, and sup a livre cheaper, than if the
youth had been left to make the tour and the bargain him-
self. Look at our governor! I beseech you: see, he is

an inch taller as he relates the advantages. And here

endeth his pride his knowledge, and his use".

Perhaps a fond father imagines that the stripling will
be taken up everywhere he goes by distinguished natives of
the country to whom he may carry letters of recommenda-
tion. Him Sterne would disillusion by observing that "com-
pany which is really good, is very rare and very shy";

and as for letters to eminent men, they will obtain a courteous
first reception but nothing more. "Conversation", it should
be understood, "is a traffiek; and if you enter into it, without
some stock of knowledge, to balance the account perpetually

betwixt you, the trade drops at once. * * * There is

nothing to be extracted from the conversation of young

itinerants, worth the trouble of their bad language, or

the interruption of their visits." Cut off from his intel-
lectual superiors, "the disappointed youth seeks an easier
society ; and as bad company is always ready, and ever lying

in wait, the career is soon finished ; and the poor prodigal

returns the same object of pity, with the prodigal in the
Gospel."

So ended, by a violent reversal to the parable, the
strangest of all Yorick's sermons, composed, very likely, not
long before his departure for Italy.

CHAPTER XVII

THE TOUR OF ITALY

OCTOBEB 1765— MAY 1766

When the sermons came out, Sterne was at Rome, mid-
way on the grand tour which has been immortalised in
A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Con-
sidered as an actual record of the expedition, the famous
book has, however, for the biographer very great perplexities,
at first sight almost desperate, inasmuch as Yorick com-
bined with the observations of this year characters and inci-
dents of his first sojourn in France, and further mingled with
both sets anecdotes heard and read by the way and else-
where, as if they had really fallen within his own personal
experience. Two distinct tours and some fiction were thus
completely fused in one beautiful narrative. We may never-
theless eliminate much of the fiction and most of the first
tour; and then, with the aid of various letters, retell
the story of Sterne's last travels on the Continent. If
the narrative, thus cut down and pieced out, loses much of
its literary charm, there will emerge in its place a new
biographical interest. Monsieur Dessein, La Fleur, and
many names disguised under initials and stars will turn out
to be real persons whom Sterne met and associated with on
the journey, though no one should insist too far upon a literal
interpretation of the incidents which fancy at times wove
about them.*

Perhaps we should be reminded at the outset that the
Yorick who made the tour of Italy, was in all externals quite
different from the Yorick whom we first saw as the rural
parson cultivating his glebe and other lands. So careless

* In 1824 John Poole the dramatist went over the Sterne route from
Calais to Paris, identifying Sterne's stopping-places and gathering up
local traditions. See his two articles in the London Magazine for 1825.
pp. 38-46 and 387-94.

360

THE TOUR OF ITALY 361

and slovenly was he then in appearance as to attract the
attention of boys when he came into York and shuffled
through the streets. Keferring to those days, he called him-
self "a lousy prebendary". Five years of London and Paris
made out of him a Chesterfield. He grew scrupulous, though
not extravagant, in dress; and no man of the age was more
at ease in society — more courteous and more urbane. On
his first coming to London, Reynolds painted him most
fittingly in the clerical gown which he wore as Vicar of
Sutton. In Carmontelle and Gainsborough he appeared in
the costume of an aristocrat. And yet Yorick, possessing
good taste, never assumed the fashionable colours of the
period, but chose instead the equally fashionable complete
black, with conspicuous white lace ruffles, neat and dignified,
becoming a man of his age and profession as well as a man
of the world. So, remembering what he once was, it is rather
amusing to find Sterne writing to Foley from London on the
seventh of October to request him to order from Madame
Requiere, against his reaching Paris in seven days, "une
peruque a bourse, au mieux — c'est-d-dire — une la plus extra-
ordinaire— la plus jolie — la plus gentille", for you know,
he concluded, "j'ai I'honneur d'etre grand critique — et Hen
difficile encore dans les affaires de peruques".

Sure of his Parisian wig, Sterne next packed "half a
dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches" in his port-
manteau, and took a place in the Dover stage, if his plans did
not go wrong, on the morning of October 9, 1765. The fol-
lowing day he embarked on the nine-o'clock packet for Calais,
and five or six hours later he was refreshing himself at his
inn on fricasseed chicken and burgundy. The inn where he
rested after the voyage was not the old Lyon d 'Argent — or
the Silver Lion, as the English called it — where his wife and
daughter lodged a night, and whose master — Monsieur Grand-
sire — Sterne set down, after one experience with him, as "a
Turk in grain"; it was the Hotel d'Angleterre, recently
established in "the principal street" of Calais by Monsieur
Dessein. The host, it is said, had been a favourite waiter
with the English passing through Calais, most likely at the
Silver Lion, and assumed his peculiar name from a compli-

362 LAUBENCE STEBNE

ment of one of them, who remarked: "II a du dessein, ce
gaillard Id." This shrewd gargon, taking advantage of his
master's unpopularity, opened a house of his own, to which
most tourists, furious at Monsieur Grandsire's overcharges,*
hastened to transfer their patronage. "No hotel in France",
remarked Philip Thieknesse, the eccentric traveller, who
spent a day there in 1767, "is equal to that from which I
now write. Monsieur Dessein knows the gout of both nations
and blends them with propriety ; and he has the advantage of
a palace as it were, to do it in."t Monsieur Dessein was
rather odd in appearance — though Sterne scarcely noticed
it, — as he had but one eye and wore a long wig with curls
and tail, at a time when shorter wigs were the fashion. He
was most civil and affable in bearing, though sharp in his
charges and at a bargain. It was his custom to greet an
innocent arrival from Dover with a bow and a side-look
resembling the squint of a cock as he eyes a barley-corn, and
then to ask Monsieur whether he had any English gold to
exchange for French coin. These transactions were very
profitable, for Monsieur Dessein knew how to make ten sous
on every guinea. % But if he cheated his guests, it was done
so pleasantly that they felt no resentment.

Burned out in 1770, Dessein built anew, adding a theatre,
and fitted up a room in honour of his famous guest, hanging
over the mantel a mezzotint of Reynolds's Monsieur Sterne
d'Yorich, and painting on the outside of the door in large
characters Sterne's i Chamber. There numberless English-
men down to Thackeray slept, in the fancy that they were
lying in the very place where Sterne once stretched his lean
shanks. At the new inn Foote laid the scene of his Trip to
Calais, containing a caricature of the master under the name
of Monsieur Tromfort. There, too, stayed Frederic Rey-
nolds, another dramatist, for a day or two in 1782, while the
merry host was still alive ; and asking him whether he remem-

*J. Wilkes to Humphrey Cotes, Dec. 12, 1764: Correspondence of
Wilkes, edited by J. Almon, II, 102-3 (London, 1805).

t Letter dated August 10, 1767: Thieknesse, Useful Bmts to those
who make the Torn of France, 278-81 (London, 1768).

% Thieknesse, A Year's Jowney through France and Spain. I. 9-30
(London, 1778). '

THE TOUR OF ITALY 363

bered Monsieur Sterne, received the interesting reply:
" 'Your countryman, Monsieur Sterne, von great, von vary
great man, and he carry me vid him to posterity. He gain
moche money by his Journey of Sentiment — mais moi — I
— make more through de means of dat, then he, by all his

ouvrages reunies Ha, ha!' Then, as if in imitation of

Sterne, he laid his forefinger on my breast, and said in a
voice lowered almost to a whisper, 'Qu'en pensez vousf "*
To say truth, the mere mention of Monsieur Dessein in the
Sentimental Journey made him "one of the richest men in
Calais".

Sterne halted at Dessein 's for no more than two or three
hours, but time enough to set going a series of sweet and
pleasurable emotions in himself and others, which was his
premeditated aim in this tour. No churches, no monuments,
no art galleries were to be visited, or even looked at if it
could be helped ; at least, they were nowhere to intrude upon
a pleasant commerce with men and women, with strangers
as well as with old friends whom he might chance to meet on
the way to Italy. "I conceive", he said in explaining the
difference between his and all other journeys, "every fair
being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the
original drawings, and loose sketches hung up in it, than the
transfiguration of Eaphael itself." " 'Tis a quiet journey",
he concluded exquisitely, "of the heart in pursuit of
Nature, and those affections which arise out of her, which

make us love each other and the world, better than we

do."

Sterne had not long to wait for his first emotional
experience. Close by Dessein 's was a convent of Franciscan
friars^-monks Sterne called them — one of. whom was accus-
tomed to attend all visitors at the inn and to do the duties
of the quete for his order. Mrs. Thrale saw him in 1775,
while at Calais with her husband and Dr. Johnson ; and sub-
sequently, when she had become Mrs. Piozzi, introduced him
into her Journey through France as Father Felix, who, after
a career in the army, retired in old age to the convent for

* Life and Times of Frederic 'Reynolds, written by himself, I, 179-
81 (London, 1826).

364 LAURENCE STERNE

quiet and study. On hearing the story of his varied life,
Dr. Johnson declared "that so complete a character could
scarcely be found in romance". Sterne had drunk the last
of his burgundy in a health to the King of France, and his
arteries were all beating cheerily together under its influence,
when Father Felix, or his earlier counterpart, entered and
asked an alms for his convent. "It was one of those heads",
Sterne saw at a glance, "which Guido has often painted —
mild, pale — penetrating, free from all commonplace ideas
of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth
it look'd forwards; but look'd, as if it look'd at some-
thing beyond this world." Advancing into the room three
paces, the thin and aged friar "stood still; and laying his
left hand upon his breast (a slender white staff with which

he journey'd being in his right) when I got close up to

him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants
of his convent, and the poverty of his order — and did it
with so simple a grace — and such an air of deprecation
was there in the whole cast of his look and figure — I was
bewitch 'd not to have been struck with it". Notwithstand-
ing the supplicant's persuasive words and attitude, Sterne
denied the alms for the effect of the denial upon his own and
the friar's heart, as seen or felt in the blood coursing through
their cheeks; and then for the same reason he begged the
friar's pardon, and exchanged snuff-boxes with him, while
watching "the stream of good feeling" gush from the mendi-
cant's eyes. Never before had Sterne known, he averred,
how sweet was a gentle contention ending in mutual good will.
"With Monsieur Dessein, Sterne then strolled out to his
remise, or magazine of chaises, to purchase one for the tour of
Italy. As they walked along, each bent upon overreaching the
other in the bargain, Sterne eyed his host askance, thinking
him one moment a Jew and then a Turk ; but while he was si-
lently "wishing him to the devil", he encountered a beautiful
woman, Madam de L * * * , who had just come in from
Brussels on her way to Paris ; and at once all the base and un-
gentle passions gave place to pity for the distress which he read
in her look and bearing. "It was a face of about six and
twenty — of a clear transparent brown, simply set off without

THE TOUR OP ITALY 365

rouge or powder it was not critically handsome, but there

was that in it, which, in the frame of mind I was in, attached

me much more to it it was interesting; I fancied it wore

the characters of a widow 'd look, and in that state of its
declension, which had passed the two first paroxysms of sor-
row, and was quietly beginning to reconcile itself to its loss

but a thousand other distresses might have traced the

same lines." The fresh train of emotions, as Sterne took the
hand of the unhappy Fleming by the door of the remise or sat
with her alone in one of Monsieur Dessein's chaises, was broken
off by the arrival of the count, her brother. What name was
borne by the sentimental stranger who crossed Sterne's path
at Calais, matters little, but the curious filled out the stars
into the Marquise de Lamberti. In bidding her adieu, Torick
was suffered to kiss her gloved hand twice; whereupon his
heart so melted within him that he no longer recked of being
cheated by Monsieur Dessein. With no word of protest, he
paid the Turk twelve guineas for an old chaise, and ordered
post-horses directly.

That evening Sterne probably went on to Boulogne; and
thence to Montreuil in the rain, where he lay the next night
at the old Hotel de la Cour de France, kept by Monsieur
Varennes. At this inn Sterne was again attended by Jana-
tone, la belle file de chambre, whom he had seen knitting
her stocking on his first journey. In the interval she had
grown more coquettish under the flatteries of English trav-
ellers, Sterne thought, to her harm. Was it Janatone, one
wonders, or her successor, whom Mrs. Piozzi found the only
interesting object at Montreuil? The girl, still handsome,
complained to Mrs. Piozzi of the behaviour of the lady's
avant-courier. "II parle sur le haut ton, mademoiselle",
apologised Mrs. Piozzi, "mais il a le cceur bon." "Ouida",
retorted the smart file de chambre, "mais c'est le ton qui
fait le chanson."*

On the road to Montreuil, Sterne came near losing his
portmanteau, which fell off twice into the mud and took him

* Hester Lynch Piozzi, Observations and Reflections made in the
Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany (London,
1779). For Calais and Montreuil, see I, 1-9.

366 LAURENCE STEBNE

out in the rain to tie it on. As a precaution against further
mishaps, Monsieur Varennes advised him to take a valet, who
would protect him against careless postillions, as well as shave
him, dress his wig, and wait upon him at table. If the Eng-
lish gentleman wished such a servant, said the host, no one
could suit him better than La Fleur, who was beloved by
everybody in Montreuil. At that moment La Fleur, who had
been standing at the door breathless with expectation, stepped
into the room; and Sterne put him through an examination
in the valet's art. La Fleur had been, he told his prospective
master, a drummer-boy in the army; but finding that "the
honour of beating a drum was likely to be its own reward, as
it open'd no further track of glory", he retired "d ses
terres"; that is, with the varnish off, he had deserted and fled
to Montreuil in disguise, where he was living as best he could,
by performing small services for guests at the Hotel de
France. "He could make spatterdashes", it was brought out
in the enquiry, "and play a little upon the fiddle"; while
the host put in a word to say that the lad was trustworthy
and even-tempered, — if he had a fault, it was that he was
always in love with one maiden or another. No further
recommendation was necessary to the sentimental traveller,
who immediately engaged La Fleur for the whole tour of
Italy. "He was", said Sterne in remembrance, "a faithful,
affectionate, simple soul as ever trudged after the heels of a
philosopher ; and notwithstanding his talents of drum-beating
and spatterdash-making, which, though very good in them-
selves, happened to be of no great service to me, yet was I
hourly recompensed by the festivity of his temper it sup-
plied all defects 1 had a constant resource in his looks,

in all difficulties and distresses of my own 1 was going to

have added, of his too; but La Fleur was out of the reach of
every thing; for whether it was hunger or thirst, or cold or
nakedness, or watchings, or whatever stripes of ill luck
La Fleur met with in our journeyings, there was no index in

his physiognomy to point them out by he was eternally

the same."

That evening, as Sterne ate his supper, with his own valet
behind his chair, he felt as happy as a monarch in his good

THE TOUE OF ITALY 367

fortune. The next morning La Fleur was placed in command
of all details of the journey. He ordered his master's chaise,
horses, and postillion to the door; and standing in his great
jack-hoots hefore the inn, took a tender leave of half a dozen
girls, for all of whom he promised to hring pardons from
Rome. Sterne passed out to his chaise through a long line
of urbane beggars, among whom he distributed sous in return
for their blessings ; the postillion cracked his whip ; La Fleur
mounted a bidet and shot forward as avant-courier. Nothing
happened until they were approaching Nampont, where
La Fleur 's horse shied at a dead ass in the road, cast his
rider, and scampered back home. Whereupon Sterne took
his valet into the chaise along with him, and they jogged
on to Amiens for the night. There they overtook Madame
de L * * * and her brother, who put up, however, at another
inn. It may be that the lady, as says the Sentimental Jour-
ney, sent over to Sterne a letter of introduction to her friend
Madame de R * * * of Paris ; and that he, perplexed in his
French, repaid the courtesy by adapting one of La Fleur 's
old love letters to a suitable reply. In two days more, over
which hangs silence, Sterne was again in Paris.

If the Sentimental Journey points true, Sterne took lodg-
ings at the Hotel de Modene, number 14 Rue Jacob,* then a
pretty street, in the Faubourg St. Germain, with residences,
as the imagination may still restore them, set back from the
street and built around courts. On the second floor was
his room, furnished with bureau and writing-table, and hav-
ing bed and windows bright with crimson curtains. This
dainty apartment Sterne chose for a scene with Madame
de R * * * 's "fair fille de chambre", who came with an
enquiry from her mistress; and for another scene with the
grisette who sold him "a pair of ruffles" from her box of
laces. It was there, too, that La Fleur appeared on a Sunday
morning, dressed, to the surprise of his master, in a scarlet
livery, which he had purchased at a second-hand shop in the
Rue de la Vieille Friperie for four louis d'or, the first instal-
ment of his wages; and there Sterne sat the rest of the day
translating a story for the Sentimental Journey out of the
* Notes and Queries, seventh series, IX, 366.

368 LAtTBENCE STERNE

crabbed French of Babelais's time. In a long passage below,
opening upon the court-yard, hung the cage of an impris-
oned starling, taught to cry with the plaintive voice of a

child: "I can't get out 1 can't get out." Hearing the

sad notes one day as he was going down stairs, Sterne re-
turned directly to his room, he says, and leaning his head
over the little table, imagined and wrote out the sketch of the
"pale and feverish" captive wasting away in a dungeon of
the Bastille.

The day after his arrival, if we may still go on with the
Sentimental Journey, Sterne procured his wig and dressed
himself to call upon Madam de R * * * , to whom he bore a
letter from the brown lady that he had exchanged tender
courtesies with at Calais. It was but a short walk to her
hotel round the corner in the handsome Rue des Saints
Peres. But the day was so far advanced before the barber
and La Fleur had done with him, that he changed his mind
and decided to visit the Comedie Italienne, popularly called
the Opera Comique, across the river in the Rue Mauconseil.
The old quarter of the city where stood his hotel, was then,
as it is now, a network of streets so very perplexing that it
was necessary for him to enquire his way. Strolling along the
Rue Jacob and its continuation in the Rue du Colombier, "in
search of a face not likely to be disordered by such an
interruption", he saw, as he was about to pass the door of a
glove-shop, a grisette of uncommon beauty, sitting in the
rear and making a pair of ruffles. He stepped in and pur-
chased two pairs of gloves. During the transaction, his
fingers fell upon the grisette 's wrist, that he might feel the
pulse of one of the fairest and best-tempered beings that he
had ever met with in his sentimental wanderings.

"I had counted twenty pulsations", as Sterne relates the
adventure, "and was going on fast towards the fortieth, when
her husband coming unexpected from a back parlour into the

shop, put me a little out of my reckoning. 'Twas nobody

but her husband, she said so I began a fresh score ■

Monsieur is so good, quoth she, as he pass'd by us, as to give

himself the trouble of feeling my pulse The husband took

off his hat, and making me a bow, said, I did him too much

THE TOUB OF ITALY 369

honour and having said that, he put on his hat and

walk'd out."

Poor Yorick was utterly overcome by the grisette's quick
black eyes, which shot through long and silken eyelashes into
his very heart and reins. He nevertheless went on, under the
guidance of a lad from, the glove-shop, to the Pont-Neuf,
whence the route was clear to the Hue Mauconseil. At the
play, his heart was disturbed by the selfishness of a "tall
corpulent German near seven feet high", standing in the
parterre, who persisted in keeping in front of a dwarf, and
so shutting off for the little fellow all view of the stage.
Sterne's plaudits were not for the actors, but for a sentinel
who thrust the German back with his musket and placed the
dwarf before him. "This is noble", exclaimed Sterne to a
French officer in the same box with him, and clapped his
hands together. After the play, he stopped a few minutes
in the "long dark passage issuing out from the Opera Com-
ique into a narrow street", to watch the behaviour of two
tall and lean ladies, who, while waiting for their carriage,
were wheedled out of two twelve-sous pieces by a beggar
proficient in the art of that flattery which rules the world.
On the way back to his hotel, he lost his way again, as well he
might, after crossing the Pont-Neuf and reaching the Quai
de Conti; but by chance he met Madame R * * * 's file de
chambre, who walked along with him to the Rue de Guen6-
gaud, and bidding him adieu there, directed him to the
Hotel de Modene, where La Fleur was waiting to put his
master to bed.

These incidents, related baldly without the author's em-
bellishments, seem very trivial indeed; but they show Sterne
clearly in lights which have hitherto only partially shone
upon him. Human nature among all classes intensely inter-
ested him. He was as eager to learn what was going on in the
heart and head of a grisette who kept her husband's shop,
or of a dwarf in distress at the theatre, or tumbling into a
gutter, as he was to divine the brilliant men and women
who frequented the salons. If we could know, we should
probably find that the evening at the Opera Comique
was but typical of many walks alone through the streets of

24

370 LAURENCE STERNE

Paris in quest of fresh emotions. But except in so far as we
have cautiously employed it, the Sentimental Journey can
not be trusted as a guide for Sterne in Paris at this time.
French gentlemen with whom he had previously associated
and whom he brings upon the scene in his narrative) were
mostly away on their estates in the country. The Court was
still at Fontainebleau ; and Hume, as charge d'affaires, was
there too. With the Court were likely also the Due de
Choiseul and the Comte de Bissy, whom Sterne represents
himself as going out to see at Versailles. All this part of the
Sentimental Journey was based upon Sterne's first reception
in Paris three years before ; while the hint of an excursion to
Rennes to witness the Marquis d'E * * * * reclaim his
sword before the assembled states of Brittany, is pure fiction.
It was a touching story which Sterne heard or read of some-
where, and related because it fitted into his emotional scheme.
Paris was this year only his stopping-place for not above ten
days on the route to Italy. Arrangements had to be made
with his bankers for remittances and for sending on his letters
from home. In these transactions Foley, who was likely out
of town, gave place to Panchaud, the other member of the
firm, for whom and his unmarried sister Sterne expressed
great esteem. By good luck Diderot and Baron d'Holbach
were close by at Grandval, if not in the city; and they
received Sterne into the old intimacy.

Amid the dearth of fashionable society, Sterne found
amusement not only in sentimental pilgrimages among the
tradespeople, but in the English colony which was beginning
to gather for the winter. "Wilkes, who had varied his exile
by a visit to Italy, had just returned to Paris and settled
near Sterne at the Hotel de Saxe in the Rue du Colombier.
With him or not far away was Foote the comedian, who was
in Paris for rest and recreation. The trio fell in with another
set of Englishmen, who hovered around John CraufurcL of
Errol, "one of the gayest young gentlemen", wrote a cadet
in his service, "and the greatest gambler that ever belonged
to Scotland". The remark ought not to be taken as in the
least derogatory to Mr. Craufurd's character, as the world
went in those days ; for he was one of the best known young

THE TOUK OF ITALY 371

men in London and Parisian society. The season over at
home, it was Craufurd's custom to make a circular tour
abroad which should include Paris, where the blind and
brilliant Madame du Deffand took him under her protection.
He put up usually at the expensive Hotel de Pare Koyal, and
had his dinners served from the still more expensive Hotel
de Bourbon. As befitted a young spark of wealth and
leisure, he drove about Paris in a French chariot, with a
French coachman and a French footman. In his company
were the young Earl of Upper Ossory, a man of finer grain,
and Lord "William Gordon, second son of the third Duke of
Gordon. Horace Walpole was also in Paris, living, say his
letters, most of the time — when not with Madame du Deffand,
or nursing the gout in his lodgings — with Craufurd and Lord
Ossory, the latter of whom he classed among "the most
amiable" men he had ever known — "modest, manly, very
sensible, and well bred".

Sterne, it would appear, knew Craufurd beforehand, for
he wrote of him as "my friend"; and he now made the
acquaintance of the rest in the group. "Walpole, who had
hitherto kept out of Sterne's way, was at length trapped into
his company, either at Baron d'Holbach's or Craufurd's
table, whence good breeding would not let him escape. "Wilkes
and Foote were present on the occasion. "You will think it
odd", "Walpole wrote to Thomas Brand, on October 19, 1765,
"that I should want to laugh, when "Wilkes, Sterne, and Foote
are here; but the first does not make me laugh, the second
never could, and for the third, I choose to pay five shillings
when I have a mind he should divert me."

Either then or at another time Craufurd related to the
company the following strange adventure, which Sterne re-
worked for "The Case of Delicacy" at the close of the Sen-
timental Journey:

On the way between Verviers and Aix-la-Chapelle, the
young man once stopped at a crowded inn and engaged the
only room left for the night. It was a large room with a closet
containing another but smaller bed. Half an hour later, a
Flemish lady, called Madame Blond in the story, arrived
with her maid in a chaise, and asked for a night's lodging,

372 LAUBENCE STEENE

with some perturbation of spirit when she saw that the inn
was full. The landlady could not possibly accommodate her ;
but Madame Blond persisted in having a bed, saying that she
would make any shift for one night. So it was finally
arranged that she might take the closet of the English gen-
tleman's apartment, if he would agree to it. Thereupon
Madame Blond, sending her compliments in advance, came
up stairs, and asked Mr. Craufurd, "with all the politeness
in the world", if she might sit with him through the evening.
With equal civility he made her welcome, and invited her to
a game of cards while supper was preparing. When the
evening had worn on to an end, Mr. Craufurd politely said:
' ' If you like, Madame Blond, you may have the bed, as it will
hold yourself and maid, and I will sleep in the closet." "By
no means", replied the Flemish, lady; "I am extremely
obliged to you for the privilege of the little bed." "Come,
madame", then rejoined Mr. Craufurd, "we will play at
cards for the large bed." They accordingly played for it,
and the lady lost. Madame Blond bade the English gentle-
man good night, retired to her closet, and, as she did so, gave
strict orders to her maid to bolt the door, though why was not
quite clear to Mr. Craufurd, since the bolt was on the outside
in his own room. The next morning Madame Blond went on
to Spa, and Mr. Craufurd to Aix-la-Chapelle.*

Near the twenty-fourth of October, Sterne left Paris,
taking La Fleur in his smart livery along with him, and
pursued his way southwards to Lyons — a week's journey by
the long route which he chose through "the Bourbonnais,
the sweetest part of France". It was "the hey-day of the
vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every
one's lap, and every eye is lifted up — a journey through each
step of which Music beats time to Labour, and all her children
are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters". Amid "the
joyous riot" of his affections, which flew out and kindled at
every new scene, he was sobered, according to the Sentimental
Journey, by the sight of a distracted peasant girl sitting by

* John Macdonald, a cadet of the family of Keppoch, Travets in
Various Parts of Europe, Asia and Africa (London, 1790). The anec-
dote, preceded by an account of Craufurd, is given on pages 138-40.

THE TOUB OF ITALY 373

the roadside as his chaise drew near Moulins, the ancient
seat of the Bourbons. Doubtless the account of the poor girl
can not be accepted precisely as Sterne rendered it; but
it is quite certain that behind the adventure lay some emo-
tional hint. Sterne related the story twice over, and a version
subsequently got into current anecdotes, with the claim that
it was derived from La Fleur. "When we came up to her",
says the valet's version, "she was grovelling in the Road like

an infant, and throwing the Dust upon her head and yet

few were more lovely! Upon Sterne's accosting her with
tenderness, and raising her in his arms, she collected herself

and resumed some composure told him her tale of misery

and wept upon his breast my master sobbed aloud. I

saw her gently disengage herself from his arms, and she
sung him the service to the Virgin; my poor master covered
his face with his hands, and walked by her side to the Cottage
where she lived."

If the narrative purporting to come from La Fleur can
not be proved authentic, it is at least a very good guess at
what really occurred by the dusty roadside. Sterne himself,
be it noted, really said no more than was attributed to his
valet, nor quite so much as that, when he first told the story
for the ninth volume of Shandy, though incident and emotion
were graded by the most perfect art to a humorous conclusion :

" They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I

instantly let down the fore-glass to hear them more distinctly

'Tis Maria; said the postillion, observing I was listening

Poor Maria, continued he, (leaning his body on one side

to let me see her, for he was in a line betwixt us), is sitting
upon a bank playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her
little goat beside her. * * * It is but three years ago, that
the sun did not shine upon so fair, so quick-witted and
amiable a maid; and better fate did Maria deserve, than to
have her Banns forbid, by the intrigues of the curate of the

parish who published them. He was going on, when

Maria, who had made a short pause, put the pipe to her

mouth, and began the air again they were the same notes ;

yet were ten times sweeter. It is the evening service to

the Virgin, said the young man but who has taught her

374 LAURENCE STEKNE

to play it or how she came by her pipe, no one knows.

"We had got up by this time almost to the bank where
Maria was sitting; she was in a thin white jacket, with her
hair, all but two tresses, drawn up into a silken net, with a

few olive leaves twisted a little fantastically on one side

she was beautiful; and if ever I felt the full force of an

honest heartache, it was the moment I saw her God help

her ! poor damsel ! above a hundred masses, said the postillion,
have been said in the several parish churches and convents

around, for her, but without effect. * * * As the postillion

spoke this, Maria, made a cadence so melancholy, so tender
and querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise to help her,
and found myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I

relapsed from my enthusiasm. Maria look'd wistfully

for some time at me, and then at her goat and then at me

and then at her goat again, and so on, alternately

Well, Maria, said I softly What resemblance do you

find?"

A night at "an excellent inn", and Sterne went on into
the mountains of Lyonnais. As he was ascending Mount
Tarare in the evening, the thill-horse lost two shoes, making
it necessary, since the postillion had no nails, to stop at a
little farm-house for repairs. On entering the house, Sterne
found a grey-haired peasant and his wife, with grown-up sons
and daughters and a numerous progeny out of them, "all
sitting down together to their lentil-soup ; a large wheaten
loaf was in the middle of the table; and a fiaggon of wine
at each end of it, promised joy through the stages of the
repast". The peasant, rising up and stepping towards the
stranger, cordially invited him to join in the evening meal.
"I sat down at once", says Sterne, who was as much at home
with a French peasant as with Baron d'Holbach, "like a son
of the family; and to invest myself in the character as-
speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old man's knife,
and taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon."
When supper was over, the sons and daughters of labour all
ran out on a little esplanade in front of the house; and the
peasant and his wife followed with their guest, who sat down
between them "upon a sopha of turf by the door". The old

THE TOUE OF ITALY 375

man touched his vielle, and all the children and grandchildren
fell into the evening dance.

After watching the scene through a few dances, Sterne
pushed on to Tarare, a little town among the mountains,
where he engaged a voiturin with a couple of mules to con-
duct him in his chaise down the descent to Lyons and on
through Savoy. At Lyons, he spent a joyous week, "dining
and supping every day at the commandant's", in company
with ten or twelve other Englishmen who were accorded
similar hospitality. Of them was a certain "Lord F. W.",
and Home Tooke, the pugnacious parson who was about to
turn political agitator in favour of Wilkes. Mr. Home, as
he was then called, was a young man under thirty who had
not yet discovered his true vocation. Some years before, he
had "suffered", he told Wilkes, "the infectious hand of a
bishop to be waved over" him, but he "was not ordained a
hypocrite", and would go his own way. On coming over
to France as bear-leader to the son of a Mr. Taylor of
Brentford, he discarded his clerical dress, and flaunted
through Paris in scarlet and silver, alternating with blue
and silver. There were indeed no less than five variegated
suits in his wardrobe. After visiting Wilkes and offering
him his services, he started on the grand tour a day or two
before Sterne arrived in Paris. Although Sterne found him
an agreeable companion enough at Lyons, he was clearly
bored by his eulogies of the champion of British liberty.
"Is there any cause of coldness", Home enquired in a letter
to Wilkes, "between you and Sterne? He speaks very hand-
somely of you, when it is absolutely necessary to speak at all ;
but not with that warmth and enthusiasm, that I expect
from every one that knows you."* When the two men
parted, Home for Montpellier and Sterne for Italy, it was
agreed that they should meet at Siena in the summer.

Sterne's route lay through the mountain passes of Savoy
over Mont Cenis to Turin. A day's journey brought him to
Pont-de-Beauvoisin, a small town almost surrounded by two
branches of the Guiers-Vif, which takes its rise in the

* Alexander Stephens, Memoirs of John Home Tooke, II, 76-7 (Lon-
don, 1813).

376 LAUBENCE STEKNE

Alps. At this place, Sterne was held prisoner for two or
three days by the terrible autumn rains, which poured down
upon him and his fellow travellers, as if heaven and earth
were coming together. The petty rivulets swelled with the
rains and the melting snow until they became impassable;
and Sterne, hemmed in on all sides, could neither return to
Lyons nor advance into the mountains. Setting forward at
length on the eighth of November, with voiturin and mules,
he was a full week in traversing Savoy, along precipices, up
and down narrow valleys by the side of mountain torrents
and cataracts, "which roll down great stones" from the
summits. One evening, as he was hastening through a pour-
ing rain from St. Michel to Modane, his mules came to a
sudden halt before a huge fragment of rock which had fallen
across the road. All day long the peasants had been trying
to remove it; and for two hours more they laboured on into
the "wet and tempestuous night", while Sterne sat in his
chaise, watching them through the window amid the flare of
torches. "When a narrow passage was finally cleared for him,
it was too late to reach Modane, and so he stopped at a
wayside inn, where he placed, in closing the Sentimental
Journey, the delicate adventure with the Piedmontese lady
and the maid of Lyonnais. To Sterne, who had none of the
poet Gray's passion for the sublime, it had all been a perilous
tour of "sudden turns and dangers" — "difficulties of getting
up", and "horrors of getting down" — through a province
where nature lay in wild disorder, with little to give, except
a sheltered habitation, to a "poor, patient, quiet, honest,
people".

Eight slight letters — one of them unpublished and two
of them mere notes to Panchaud his banker — supplemented
by little else, must carry us with Sterne through Italy as
far south as Naples and back on the return tour. Letters to
his wife which he intermittently posted, and a large bundle
of papers which he is said to have brought home with him,
containing his impressions of the manners and customs of the
people along with incidents by the way, have gone with the
wreck of time. It must have been, if his reckoning was
correct, on the evening of November 14 when Sterne en-

THE TOUR OF ITALY 377

tered Turin, the first Italian city that he ever saw, through a
corso of over-arching trees, ten miles in length and as straight
as a line, leading to the spacious Piazza Castello, where stands
the old royal palace, and near which Smollett a few months
before had taken up his quarters. Sterne's agreeable emo-
tions on entering a city of wide and regular avenues, like the
Via di Po, flanked with colonnades against the sun, may per-
haps be inferred from his remark about old Paris, whose
streets, he said, were so narrow that a man could never tell
on which side he was walking. It was his first intention to
make Turin only a stopping-place on the way to Milan; but
continual rains, which had laid the intervening country
under water, rendered it impossible for him to proceed for
a fortnight. It was "a joyous fortnight". Within twenty-
four hours after his arrival he received invitations to "a
dozen houses"; the following day he was presented to the
King of Sardinia; and when that ceremony- was over, he had
his "hands full of engagements".

Only two other Englishmen were then in Turin — "Mr.
Ogilby", who permitted Sterne to take down his name for
five sets of the Sentimental Journey on imperial paper, and
the young Sir James Macdonald of Skye, over whose death
the Western Isles were soon to lament, as the Marcellus upon
whom they had rested their hopes. Nothing else lets us into
the charm of Sterne's personality quite so well as the ease
with which he attached himself to young men, who choose
their companions by a subtle instinct, which they never stop
to explain, and could not explain if they tried. Between
Sterne and Macdonald it was attraction at first sight. The
young baronet, only twenty-four years old, united the best
traditions of Eton and Oxford for scholarship with uncom-
monly fine manners, large talents for business, and "the
patriarchal spirit", says Boswell, "of a great Highland chief-
tain". After sharing in "all kinds of honours" at Turin,
the two men bade their friends adieu with regret, and started
on November 28 for the south by a long detour, which
included many of the towns of northern Italy. Macdonald
was longing to see Borne; and Sterne, whose health again
showed signs of breaking, thought it best to winter in

378 LATJKENCE STEBNE

Naples. Writing to Panchaud on business when they reached
Florence, Sterne incidentally gave his delightful itinerary
up to that point. "I have been a month", he said, "passing

the plains of Lombardie stopping in my way at Milan,

Parma, Placenza, and Bologna with weather as delicious

as a kindly April in England, and have been three days in

crossing a part of the Apenines cover 'd with thick snow

sad transition!"

At Milan occurred an adventure which he tucked. into the
Sentimental Journey. "I was going", as Sterne elaborated
the story, "one evening to Martini's concert at Milan, and
was just entering the door of the hall, when the Marquisina
di F * * * was coming out in a sort of a hurry — she was
almost upon me before I saw her; so I gave a spring to one

side to let her pass She had done the same, and on the

same side too: so we ran our heads together: she instantly
got to the other- side to get out: I was just as fortunate as
she had been ; for I had sprung to that side, and opposed her

passage again We both flew together to the other side,

and then back and so on it was ridiculous; we both

blush 'd intolerably; so I did at last the thing I should have

done at first 1 stood stock still, and the Marquisina had

no more difficulty. I had no power to go into the room, till
I had made her so much reparation as to wait and follow

her with my eye to the end of the passage She look'd

back twice. * * * I ran and begg'd pardon for the embar-
rassment I had given her, saying it was my intention to have

made her way. * * * I begg'd to hand her to her coach

so we went down the stairs, stopping at every third step to

talk of the concert and the adventure Upon my word,

Madame, said I, when I had handed her in, I made six differ-
ent efforts to let you go out And I made six efforts, replied

she, to let you enter 1 wish to heaven you would make a

seventh, said I With all my heart, said she, making room

Life is too short to be long about the forms of it

so I instantly stepp'd in, and she carried me home with her

And what became of the concert, St. Cecilia, who, I

suppose, was at it, knows more than I. * * * The connection
which arose out of the translation, gave me more pleasure

THE TOUR OF ITALY 379

than any one I had the honour to make in Italy." The
woman of this sentimental encounter was none other than the
beautiful and cultivated Marchesa Fagniani, who became the
friend of George Selwyn and the mother of Maria Fagniani,
wife of the third Marquis of Hertford.

Sterne allowed only three days for Florence, or just
time enough to exchange civilities with Sir Horace Mann,
the English envoy to the Court of Tuscany. Since 1760 Mann
had been reading the successive instalments of Tristram
Shandy, which diverted him extremely, though he thought
there was some "humbugging" in the style; at least men did
not talk and write that way when he was last in England.*
Macdonald was also known to Mann through letters from
their mutual friend, Horace Walpole, who described him as
"a very extraordinary young man for variety and learning,
* * * rather too wise for his age, and too fond of showing
it", but likely to "choose to know less" after seeing more of
the world, t Sterne and Macdonald were dined at the
envoy's with two young men of rank, whom they perhaps
knew beforehand. One was Earl Cowper, subsequently
created a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, who was held
bound to Florence by a tender passion for a Tuscan lady;
and the other was the Duke of Portland, the future Prime
Minister. Sterne of course visited the Duomo, Santa Croce,
and the Uffizi Gallery with his friends; and yet the only
positive evidence pointing that way is his banter of Smollett
in the Sentimental Journey for seeing "no beauty in the
features" of the Venus of Medici, and for thinking the atti-
tude "awkward and out of character".

As the travellers drew near Rome, Sterne became im-
patient for the morning when he might "tread the Vatican
and be introduced to all the saints of the Pantheon". Two
weeks were set aside for sight-seeing in the imperial city.
There are vague traditions that Sterne was several times
received by the Pope, and introduced to the noble families of
Doria and Santa Croce. Though all details of his reception

*D. Doran, Mann and Manners, II, 71 (London, 1876).

t For Walpole on Macdonald, see especially Letters, edited by Toyn-
bee, VI, 305-6, 313, 418, 423.

380 LAURENCE STERNE

are lacking, it is safe to say that Sterne could not have
stayed in Rome a fortnight or more without his presence
being widely known, nor have forgone the humorous delight
of an audience with the head of the Church that he had so
abused in his sermons. The intimation in the Sentimental
Journey that he encountered Smollett in "the grand portico
of the Pantheon", and overheard the satirist say, as he was
leaving, that it was "nothing but a huge cockpit", can not
be accepted literally; for Smollett was then in England. If
the two antipathies ever met face to face, it was two years
before at Montpellier.

At Eome Sterne and Macdonald overtook "a young gen-
tleman of fortune" named Brrington, a friend of three
years' standing, with whom they journeyed south to Naples,
just in time to witness a fresh outburst of Vesuvius.* By
the middle of January they were all established together in the
same house, said to have been the Casa di Mansel; and near
them were scattered a score of their countrymen, including
"Mr. Symonds, a person of learning and character", who may
be identified with John Symonds, Professor of Modern His-
tory at Cambridge in succession to Gray. The company had
its own pastimes — sight-seeing, games, and conversation over
news from home as it came in, letters and in the London
Chronicle — and invitations out with the most fashionable
Neapolitan society. "We have a jolly carnival of it",
Sterne wrote to Hall-Stevenson in February, "nothing but

operas — punchinelloes — festinos and masquerades "We (that

is, nous autres) are all dressing out for one this night at the
Princess Francavivalla [Francavilla] , which is to be superb.

The English dine with her (exclusive) and so much for

small chat — except that I saw a little comedy acted last
week with more expression and spirit, and true character,
than I shall see one hastily again".

Neapolitan gaiety under a mild sun agreed perfectly with
Sterne's constitution. "I find myself infinitely better than
I was", he wrote to his daughter Lydia, after three weeks at
Naples, "and hope to have added at least ten years to my

life by this journey to Italy the climate is heavenly, and

* St. James's Chronicle, February 22-25, 1766.

Laurence Sterne
Prom the replica of a bust by Nollekeiis at Skelton Castle

THE TOUR OF ITALY 381

I find new principles of health in me, which I have been
long a stranger to." Thus improving, even "growing fat,
sleek, and well liking", Sterne stayed on until about the first
of April; and then posted back to Rome with Macdonald,
Errington and Symonds, in time for the novel and impressive
ceremonies of Holy Week. In the interval of waiting, he sat
to Nollekens for a portrait bust in terra-cotta, which de-
servedly brought the sculptor "into great notice". The face,
as one views it in profile, has none of the pinched Voltairean
features of the Carmontelle portrait; it is large and full,
indicative of renewed strength and vigour. "With this per-
formance", says the sculptor's biographer, "Nollekens con-
tinued to be pleased even to his second childhood, and often
mentioned a picture which Dance had made of him leaning
upon Sterne's head."* After Easter Sterne's little company
of travellers broke up. The first to leave was Symonds, who
was going home through Prance. At his departure, Sterne
gave him a note of introduction, as yet unpublished, to Dr.
Jamme, an old Toulouse friend then in Paris, which is most
interesting as Sterne's last word on the benefit and pleasure
he had received from his sojourn in Italy. "I am much
recover 'd", he wrote on Easter Sunday, the nineteenth of

April, "by the Neapolitan Air 1 have been here in my

return three Weeks, seeing over again what I saw first
in my way to Naples. * * * We have pass'd a jolly laugh-
ing winter of it — and having changed the Scene for Rome;
we are passing as merry a Spring as hearts could wish. I
wish my friends no better fortune in this world, than to go

at this rate haec est Vita dissolutorum."

At the date of this letter and for some time before, it had
been Sterne's design to travel leisurely homewards through
Germany, as companion to Errington. They were to start
"in a few days" for Venice, where Sterne expected to meet
"many worthy men" whom he esteemed, and proceed thence
to Venice, Dresden, Berlin, and Spa, and so on to England,
either through Holland or by a loop which should give them
a week or two in Paris. With this in mind while at Naples,

* J. T. Smith, Nollekens and Ms Times, edited by Gosse, 34 (London,
1895).

382 LATJKENCE STERNE

Sterne requested Panchaud to draw him a small letter of
credit upon Mr. Watson, his correspondent at Venice, and to
forward all his letters thither by Ascension week in care of the
banker. Hall-Stevenson was also commissioned to obtain for
him a letter of recommendation from Pitt or Lord Hertford
to Lord Stormont, the English Ambassador at Vienna, "im-
porting that I am not fallen from the clouds". At other
times, opportunities of leading young men about Europe had
come to Sterne, but he had let them all pass, expressing, as
he did so, either a dislike of the gentleman in question or of
a mode of travel which commonly made the tutor subservient
to the whims of a mere boy. In this instance, however, the
prospects were good for an enjoyable tour, which would cost
him nothing beyond a little pocket money "in case of sick-
ness and accidents". "As I know him", he wrote of
Errington to Hall-Stevenson, "to be a good-hearted young
gentleman, I have no doubt of making it answer both his

views and mine at least I am persuaded we shall return

home together, as we set out, with friendship and goodwill."
But for some reason Sterne changed his plans at the last
moment, and decided to go home directly, either over the old
route through Piedmont and Savoy, or more likely — after
revisiting Siena and Florence — by boat from Leghorn to Mar-
seilles, and thence to Paris and Calais. "Was there a quarrel
or a misunderstanding, such as Sterne had often seen, and
feared for himself in these relationships? It may have been
so. And yet what drew Sterne away from Errington into
Prance was really, I think, a desire to visit his wife and
daughter, and to persuade them to return with him to Cox-
wold. Such at least is the tenor of a letter to Lydia. He
felt some anxiety, too, for their health. Mrs. Sterne was
still troubled with rheumatism; and both herself and Lydia
were trying to rid themselves of an ague which they had
contracted at Tours during the winter. Be the reason what
it may, Sterne and Errington separated towards the end of
April, leaving Macdonald behind them ill at Rome. The
young Scot had been in miserable health all winter. While
at Naples he came down with a malarial fever which assumed
the deceitful complexion of rheumatism; but when spring

THE TOUK OF ITALY 383

approached he seemed to be recovering. Then came a
relapse in Easter week at Rome. No one, however, felt any
uneasiness as to the ultimate issue. His stomach, his physi-
cian told Macdonald, would soon regain its tone, and the pal-
pitation of which he complained, "must cease in time".
But the palpitation ceased only with the beating of his heart
on the twenty-sixth of July. To his memory, his mother,
Lady Margaret Macdonald, daughter of the Earl of Eglin-
ton, erected a monument in the parish church of Sleat, for
which his friend George, Lord Lyttelton, wrote a long inscrip-
tion, saying that at his death in Rome "such extraordinary
honours were paid to his memory as had never graced that
of any other British subject since the death of Sir Philip
Sidney". Any one who doubts the appropriateness of the
comparison has only to read Macdonald 's letters to his mother
from Rome during his illness. "There is no circumstance
of danger and pain", he wrote the night before his death,
"of which I have not had the experience." But he kept his
condition from his mother until the last moment, supporting
his painful illness "with admirable patience and fortitude".*
Near the first of May, Sterne entered Prance, ready to
pay his respects to his wife; but he was uncertain where to
look for her; for she had long since left Tours on a ramble
with Lydia whither caprice might lead her. It was ' ' a wild-
goose chace" for the husband through "five or six different
towns", until he discovered a trail which took him through
Dijon, far off his route, into the old province of Pranche
Comte or Upper Burgundy. "Poor woman!" he wrote to
Hall-Stevenson after he had found her, "she was very cor-
dial, &c. and begs to stay another year or so my Lydia

pleases me much 1 found her greatly improved in every-
thing I wish'd her 1 am most unaccountably well, and

most unaccountably nonsensical 'tis at least a proof of

good spirits, which is a sign and token given me in these

latter days that I must take up again the pen In faith I

think I shall die with it in my hand, but I shall live these ten

*See especially Boswell's "Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides" in
Life of Samuel Johnson, edited by P. Fitzgerald, III, 297-99 (London,
1874).

384 LAURENCE STERNE

years, my Antony, notwithstanding the fears of my wife,
whom I left most melancholy on that account."

Ketracing his steps towards Dijon, he turned out of his

road to "a delicious Chateau of the Countess of M ", an

old Parisian friend, doubtless, who was at her country-seat
with a house full of guests. There Sterne rested for a week,
"patriarching it * * * with her ladyship and half a dozen
of very handsome and agreeable ladies". It was "a delicious
part of the world", and "most celestial weather", so that
they could "lie all day, without damps, on the grass"; and
twice a day conversation was "inspired * * * with the best
Burgundy that grows upon the mountains". From this
charming retreat, which reads like a scene out of Boccaccio,
Sterne broke away on the twenty-sixth of May ; and, to make
up for lost time, posted night and day to Paris, "where" —
he informed Hall-Stevenson — "I shall arrive in two days,
and just wind myself up, when I am there, enough to roll

on to Calais so I hope to sup with you the king's birth

day, according to a plan of sixteen days standing".

If Sterne kept the covenant to celebrate his Majesty's
birthday with Hall-Stevenson, who was then in London, he
had only three days for winding himself up in Paris. In
passing through the city, he fell in with the Abbe Galiani,
the Neapolitan envoy to France, a savant and wit near the
first rank. Their conversation, which likely occurred over
the dessert at Baron d'Holbach's, turned to Sterne's sojourn
in Italy. Galiani, who looked upon the sentimental hu-
mourist as rather a bore, nevertheless set down one bon mot
to his credit. Tears afterwards, when recalled by the King
of Naples, he wrote to Madame d'Epinay, saying, "The
only good thing which that tiresome Monsieur Sterne ever
uttered was his remark to me one day that it was far better
to die in Paris than to live in Naples."* The influence of
his Italian journey thus fading into the background, Sterne
hastened home to catch the end of the London season. His
valet, retaining the pretty name of La Fleur, which Sterne

* Lettres tie I'AbbS Galiani a Madame d'Epmay, II, 137 (Paris,
1881). For the meeting between Galiani and Sterne see M&moires de
I'AbbS Morellet, I, 128 (Paris, 1821).

THE TOUR OF ITALY 385

had given to him out of current French comedy, is said to
have married one of the girls of Montreuil for whom he was
to bring a pardon from Eome, and to have opened a public
house in Calais for English sailors navigating packet boats
across the Channel. Ill luck attended the enterprise after
the outbreak of war between France and England, and
La Fleur took up his career as valet again: The story may be
mere fiction, and yet it seems probable enough to be true.*

* An account of La Fleur and of Sterne's journey from the valet 'a
point of view appeared in the European Magazine in a long article
running through September, October, and November, 1790. Parts of
the narrative were reprinted by William Davis in his Olio, 25-32 (Lon-
don, 1814). The story, although purporting to have come from the
lips of La Fleur himself, is quite untrustworthy as a whole; but it has
behind it a real La Fleur and vague traditions.

25

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LAST VOLUME OP TRISTRAM SHANDY
JUNE 1766— MARCH 1767

Midsummer saw Sterne once more in the "peaceful re-
treat" of his parish, meditating the maxim that "man's
happiness depends upon himself", irrespective of where he
may he, whether at Naples or at Coxwold. But with the hest
disposition in the world to he consoled by the shreds of
philosophy, the moralist was ill at ease, moody, and inclined
to keep close within his shell. This year we read of no visits
to Skelton, Scarborough, or Harrogate. Even invitations to
Newburgh Priory, less than two miles away, were accepted
only because they could not be avoided, and with the com-
plaint that these courtesies of his patron oppressed him to
death. His visitations of Alne and Tollerton also, which he
usually made in person when in Yorkshire, were performed
this summer by his surrogate. And so nearly everything
known about Sterne until he went up to London at Christ-
mas points to the seclusion of Shandy Hall.

The reasons for his depressed spirits are quite obvious.
Hemorrhages, from which he seems to have been free while
abroad, set in again, and increased through the autumn until
he had three in one month. Another source of trouble lay
in his finances. If the cost of his sojourn in Italy had been
lightened by the generosity of Errington and Macdonald, the
gain thereby had been many times offset by the expenses of
Mrs. Sterne, for whose mode of life the old allowance of two
hundred guineas a year was proving inadequate. She was
spending nearly double the sum. To balance his account to
date, he directed Panchaud to draw upon Becket for a hun-
dred and sixty pounds, that the banker's books might be
clear for fresh credit — for fifty pounds, for thirty pounds,
etc., just as Mrs. Sterne might need these sums. Sterne,

386

THE LAST VOLUME OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 337

perplexed though he was at his wife's extravagances, uttered
no word of complaint. "You may rely", he wrote to Pan-
chaud, "in case it ever happens that she should draw for
fifty or a hundred pounds extraordinary, that it and every
demand shall be punctually paid — and with proper thanks;
and for this the whole Shandean family are ready to stand
security." Mrs. Sterne's large expenditures, it is but just
to add, were partly occasioned by ill health, which drove her
from place to place, in hope of improvement by change of
climate. One letter after another arrived at Shandy Hall
from Lydia, describing her mother's alarming symptoms,
and so wrought upon Sterne that he imagined his wife was
"going the way of us all". She was so ill that at one time
he began to make preparations to start for the south of
France, in order to administer spiritual comfort in the last
stages of the melancholy scene. But the journey proved
to be unnecessary, for Mrs. Sterne recovered under the
influence of liberal remittances. Besides the affairs of his
wife, urgent parish business, with which Sterne had fallen
out of tune, entered Shandy Hall to disturb further his
repose. The enclosure of Stillington Common and certain
fields and meadows dispersed in the parish, which had been
a question for some years, was now authorised by a private
Act of Parliament, for which he had petitioned along with
Stephen Croft and seven small landowners. Under the Act
were appointed three commissioners to make the awards,
with whom it was necessary for Sterne to meet, in order to
safeguard his rights as vicar of the parish. In these affairs
there were always disputes and differences over conflicting
claims and minor questions of roads, hedges, and gates, all
of which Sterne summed up in a letter to Hall-Stevenson,
saying, "I'm tormented to death and the devil by my Stil-
lington Inclosure".

But we should not draw too dark a picture of Sterne's
distresses, for the pliability of his temper always saved him.
In July his vanity was flattered by a letter from the negro
Ignatius Sancho, who' felt constrained to tell the reverend
author how much he had been benefited by books which are
"universally read and universally admired". Sancho was a

388 LAURENCE STERNE

slave, born on a ship plying in the trade between Africa and
the Spanish Main. Baptised at Carthagena under the name
of Ignatius, he was brought to England when a boy ; and sub-
sequently the surname of Sancho was given to him, because of
some fancied resemblance that his master saw between him
and Don Quixote 's squire. Of quick intelligence, he learned to
read and write, and even attempted the roles of Othello and
Oroonoko on the stage. At the date of his letter to Sterne,
he was in the service of George, the fourth Duke of Montagu,
who for small services gave him leisure to read and to culti-
vate his tastes in many ways. Like "millions" of others, he
was in love with the "amiable" my uncle Toby; and as for
Trim, he "would walk ten miles in the dog-days, to shake
hands with the honest Corporal"; but his heart had been
touched and amended most by Yorick's sermons, especially
by the discourse on the troubles of life as exemplified in Job's
misfortunes, containing a sorrowful passage on the bitter
draught of slavery which untold millions are compelled to
drink to the dregs. Can you not, Sancho besought Sterne,
"give half an hour's attention to slavery as it is at this day
undergone in the West Indies ? That subject handled in your
own manner, would ease the Yoke of many, perhaps occasion
a reformation throughout our Islands — — But should one be

the better for it gracious God ! "What a feast ! Very sure

I am, that Yorick is an Epicure in Charity. * * * Dear

Sir, think in me you behold the uplifted hands of Millions
of my Moorish brethren. Grief (you pathetically observe)

is eloquent figure to yourself their attitudes hear their

supplicatory addresses humanity must comply".* When

Sancho 's letter reached Shandy Hall, Sterne had just com-
pleted, by "a strange coincidence", "a tender tale of the
sorrows of a friendless poor negro-girl"; and while his eyes
were "still smarting" with it, he wrote back to say that he
would weave the story, if it could be managed, into the next
volume of Shandy, in the hope that it might help lift the
"sad shade" which slavery was casting over the world.

A month after this affecting correspondence, the parson
was called to York to give a dignified close to the great races.

* Morgan Manuscripts.

THE LAST VOLUME OF TEISTEAM SHANDY 389

This year all classes, from the nobility down to adventurers,
poured into the city, and all entertainments were on a grand
scale, in honour of Sterne's friend, the young Duke of York,
who condescended to be present throughout the entire gala
week. The festivities began on Tuesday the nineteenth of
August, when the officials of the city in their formalities
waited upon the duke, and congratulated him on his safe
arrival. Then followed every day the races on the field of
Knavesmire, with a play at the theatre and a ball at the
Assembly Rooms in the evening, to say nothing of cock-fights,
and noisy scenes of chance at the coffee-houses, where
Yorkshire squires fell easy victims to professional sharpers
down from London, or lost their purses while watching the
game, nobody knew just how or just where. On Saturday
night ended a week such as no one could remember; and on
the next morning everybody went in sober mood to the
cathedral to listen to the moral of it all. As described in the
newspapers of the day, it was an impressive seene in the great
church. His Royal Highness, as the central figure, was
escorted to the west door of the minster, "where he was
received * * * by the Residentiary and Choir, the Lord
Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen, who ushered him up to the
Archbishop's Throne, where he heard an excellent Discourse
from the Rev. Mr. Sterne".* What the text was it is
impossible to determine from the sermons of Sterne after-
wards published, several of which, running upon a contrast
between a godless and a Christian life, were appropriate
enough to the occasion, though none contains the sure clue.
It was Sterne's last sermon in St. Peter's, where he won his
laurels nearly twenty years before.

On Monday York reckoned up £10,000 as her gains from
the races ; the duke set out for Scarborough with his retinue ;
and Sterne, though he may have accompanied his royal
friend to the waters, most likely returned to Coxwold to
complete Tristram Shandy. During his long absence abroad,
Sterne had lost interest in the work, which, however broadly
its satire expanded at times under his hand, was essentially
local in inspiration. His design now was to wind up my
* St. James's Chronicle, August 26-28, 1766.

390 LATJBENCE STEBNE

uncle Toby's amours in a single volume for next winter, and
then to proceed with an account of his own travels on the
Continent. Thus refreshed by a change of theme, he thought
that he might again take up the Shandy household with
greater zest. Still, there was some fire left for Sterne in the
old subject, though it had narrowed down to my uncle Toby
and the widow Wadman. In nearly Sterne's best manner
was the attack of the captain in military form on the heart
of the self-seeking widow, with their conversations over my
uncle Toby's wound in the groin, as they sat on the sofa in
the parlour, while the author stood by to translate into words
what was going on in Mrs. Wadman 's fancy, as she blushed,
turned pale, resumed her natural colour, or cast her look
towards the door. And if we must have a cock-and-bull
story, it would be difficult to match the one closing the book,
reminiscent of the days when Sterne was a farmer at Sutton-
on-the-Forest. In the amusing story which the corporal
told of his brother Tom's courtship of the Jew's widow who
sold sausages at Lisbon, appeared, it may be, the episode
of the friendless negro girl which Sterne had promised
Sancho. Though not going very deeply into the question of
slavery, it was a very "pretty picture", my uncle Toby
thought, as he imagined the poor girl in the sausage shop,
"with a bunch of white feathers slightly tied to the end of a
long cane, flapping away flies — not killing them". The
narrative, scant as it was, satisfied Sancho and connected his
name with Sterne. The polite world, who soon knew why
the Moorish girl got into Shandy, courted the sentimental
negro, and Gainsborough painted for them his portrait. In
the years that followed, it became the fashion among the
tender-hearted to rid themselves of flies, not by torturing or
killing them, but by gently brushing them aside or spouting
cold water upon them.

While Sterne was putting the last strokes of humour to
his book, the troubled skies which had hung over him during
the summer and autumn were fast clearing. The waste
lands of Stillington were surveyed for a just division; and
good news arrived from the south of France. Mrs. Sterne,
said letters from Lydia asking for another hundred guineas,

THE LAST VOLUME OF TEISTEAM SHANDY 391

was now "out of danger"; and to complete the cure, Sterne
sent her some of Huxham's Tincture of the Bark, the current
remedy against agues. "Wife and daughter, having ended
their summer travels, rented a chateau near Avignon, in the
picturesque valley of the Sorgue running down from the
Fountain of Vaucluse, where they planned to settle for good,
after a short visit to Marseilles for the Christmas carnival.
They remained at Marseilles rather longer than they ex-
pected, owing, doubtless, to its large and agreeable English
colony, composed this winter of "many young men of for-
tune", including the son and grandson of Lord Southwell,
who were abroad with Edmond Malone,* the future editor of
Shakespeare. Lydia's heart, however, was at Vaucluse, amid
the romantic scenes where Petrarch lived, and wrote the
sonnets to Laura. The pretty chateau which the genteel
ladies chose, had "seven rooms of a floor — half furnished
with tapestry, half with blue taffety", — and carried, with an
annual rental of sixteen guineas, permission to fish in the
stream, and an allowance every week of partridges and other
game. Near them lived the Abbe de Sade, who had just
written a book on Petrarch, mainly to prove that Laura
was the wife of one of his ancestors. Calling almost every day
for quiet talk, the Abbe overlooked Lydia's French as she
was practising , it on a translation of her father 's sermons.
There came to the chateau also a French marquis, who offered
Lydia his heart and twenty thousand livres a year. One day
he made a coarse remark to the Abbe, apparently about Laura,
which displeased Lydia and brought the romance to a quick
conclusion. Except for the ill-breeding of the marquis, all
these little details, reaching Sterne post by post, delighted
the fond father. Again and again he pictured Lydia fishing
by the Fountain of Vaucluse, translating his sermon on the
House of Mourning, and reading or listening to the story
of Petrarch and Laura. Only one element was wanting to
the sentimental scene. Lydia broke her guitar and could
not replace it at Marseilles. As soon as Sterne heard of the
disaster, he besought Panchaud to make his girl happy by
sending one on from Paris. "It must be strung", were his
* James Prior, Life of Edmond Malone, 23-29 (London, 1860).

392 ' LATJBENCE STEENE

precise directions in the only Italian sentence surviving from

his pen, "with cat-gut and of five cords si chiama in Itdl-

iano la chit era di cinque corde". Thereafter Lydia might sit
on the banks of the Sorgue, fishing or playing her guitar
at will.

In good spirits again, though greatly weakened by recent
illness, Sterne posted to London towards the close of Decem-
ber, in advance of a heavy fall of snow, which blocked travel
or made it dangerous during half of January. As it was,
he had a hard time of it in reaching town. "I arrived here
but yesterday", he wrote on the first day of the new year,
"after a terrible journey of most inhospitable weather."*
Unusual interest centers round the lodgings which he selected
this winter, for in them he was to take his final rest a year
later. They were in the most fashionable part of the town,
over a wig-maker's shop, on the west side of Old Bond
Street, off Piccadilly. The building — it was then number 41 1
— stood for more than a century much as it was in Sterne's
day, except that the wig-maker gave place, in the revolution
of soeiety, to a cheesemonger, and the cheesemonger in turn
to a picture dealer. Finally, some years ago, all was swept
away for a modern picture gallery. From these apartments
in Bond Street, Sterne sent out many letters to his friends,
which, when read side by side with the newspapers of the
time, will enable us to see Torick as he enters and treads
through another round of pleasure among new as well as old
scenes and faces.

Sterne's first day ia London left him melancholy, for he
was all tired out, and most of his friends were still in the
country for the holidays. Nobody, he complained, was at
St. James's Coffee-House, where he just stepped in, except
Sir Charles Danvers, and "Gilly" "Williams, who was inflight
for Brighton. But a few days later all was changed; and
the new year opened gaily for him with theatres, dinners,
and assemblies. On the second of January, Garrick brought
out at Drury Lane a romantic drama called Cymon, supposed

* Morgan Manuscripts.

t Notes and Queries, fourth series, XII, 158-59. It is not quite cer-
tain that Sterne had not previously occupied these lodgings.

THE LAST VOLUME OF TRISTBAM SHAKDY 393

to have been his own in collaboration with Master Arne, the
musician. For a month London ran mad over its songs,
costumes, and spectacular setting. Sterne, who always had
a box at his disposal for any evening, was present on the great
night of the eighth when the king attended with his royal
party. He also sometimes dropped in at Covent Garden,
where Shuter was playing Falstaff and the Miser; but the
house he found empty except for "citizens' children and
apprentices". Murphy's School for Guardians, which he
saw at the rival theatre on the tenth, the friend of Garrick
pronounced "a most miserable affair", which barely survived
a first performance, so completely had Cymon drawn off the
polite world, which filled Drury Lane "brim full every
night". In these latter days, the theatre was thus becoming
for Sterne more than ever a place to go to with the company
where he happened to be dining, to see, meet, and converse
with friends.

He dined on a Sunday at Lord Ossory's with "the old
folks" and "the young virgins", and went afterwards "not
much to my credit", he said, to the Duchess of Hamilton's,
for "there were no virgins there". The Lady Hamilton of
whose drawing-room Sterne spoke so ungallantly, was one of
those Miss Gunnings whom everybody declared, when the
two lucky Irish girls first came upon the town, penniless, and
quickly won their coronets, "the handsomest women alive".
The duchess was still a beautiful woman, but beauty without
innocence or without wit — one or the other — had no attraction
for Yorick.

Sterne was present, we may be certain, at the Earl
of Shelburne's levee on the twelfth; where or elsewhere he
apparently fell in with the Virginian Arthur Lee, the
youngest of three famous brothers, of whom the others were
Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot. The young Vir-
ginian, barely twenty-six years old, had been educated at
Eton and had taken a degree in medicine at Edinburgh.
After the grand tour and a visit home, he had returned to
England "as special agent"* of the Massachusetts Bay

* The lee MSS. (Harvard University library). Among them is an
undated letter from Shelburne. inviting Lee to Bath. See also E. H.

394 LAUEENCE STEENE

Colony. The Stamp Act repealed, he was then negotiating with
Shelburne on the fisheries. Boswell, who had associated
with him at Edinburgh, trapped Dr. Johnson into a dinner
with the "patriot" and Wilkes; and Sterne, in return for the
Virginian's interest in his books, introduced him to his
friends and acted as his adviser in sentimental attachments.
"The idol of your heart", he wrote to him recklessly, before
the year was over, "is one of ten thousand. The Duke

of has long sighed in vain and can you suppose a

woman will listen to you, that is proof against titles, stars,
and red ribbands? * * * Take my advice, and pay your

addresses to Miss she esteems you, and time will wear

off an attachment which has taken so deep a root in your

heart. 1 pity you from my soul but we are all born

with passions which ebb and flow (else they would play the
devil with us) to different objects." Franklin was also in
London representing the colony of Pennsylvania. Meeting
Sterne somewhere, he gave in his name for Sterne's sermons
promised in the autumn. Sterne put him down in his private
book for two sets, and — indicative of Franklin's business
methods — wrote after the entry the word paid*

The first week or two Sterne was also much in the society
of the Duke of York. His Koyal Highness, who had been
spending Christmas in the country with Lord Spencer at
Althorp, returned to town three or four days after Sterne's
arrival, and began a series of "grand entertainments" at his
house in Pall Mall.f Of this young gentleman, Sterne liked
to write familiarly, as if he were, as was likely true, a
favourite guest. "The Duke of York", he casually remarked
in a letter to Lord Fauconberg, "was to have had a play-
house of his own, and had studied his part in the Fair
Penitent, and made Garrick act it twice on purpose to profit
by it ; but the King, 'tis said, has desired the Duke to give up

Lee, Life of Arthur Lee, I, 185-90 (Boston, 1829). Sterne's "A. L— e,
Esq.", as his name appears in the published correspondence between
the two friends, can not be identified positively with this Arthur Lee;
but the fact that both Sterne and the Virginian were associating mti
mately with Wilkes and Shelburne renders the identification very
probable.

* Whitefoord Papers, 235.

t Lloyd's Evening Post, Jan. 2-5, and 5-7, 1767.

THE LAST VOLUME OE TBISTRAM SHANDY 395

the part and the project with it." Though the duke indeed
stopped work on his own play-house in the palace, Sterne
nevertheless had an opportunity of seeing him play Lothario
to Lady Stanhope's Calista at the private theatre of their
friends the Delavals.* At the Duke of York's table the
humourist met the Earl of March, better known in social
annals by his subsequent title, the Duke of Queensberry, or
"old Q", as he was called in his age, after fifty brilliant
years in the service of pleasure. The earl was a small, keen-
eyed man of hot temper, at that time one of the lords of his
Majesty's bedchamber. With this • nobleman and "a large
company of the Duke of York's people", Sterne dined on the
eighth, before going to the theatre to see the king; but the
conversation seems to have fallen short of his expectations;
for "I came away", said the guest, "just as wise as I went."
The acquaintance with the Earl of March never led to any
intimacy.

It was, however, in this set that Sterne most likely
discovered, soon after coming to London, Commodore James,
a friend who will pass from these memoirs only with the
death of the author. As a boy, William James had an
adventurous career on the Spanish Main, which prepared
him for one still more adventurous in the Bombay marine
service. Under his command, the sea was swept of pirates
which had long imperilled the trade of the East India Com-
pany. With reckless daring, says the historian Orme,t he
pushed his ships into the very harbours of the pirate-chief
Angria — first at Severndroog and then at Gheriah — and
blew up fortifications which were supposed impregnable.
And when news reached Bombay early in 1757 that the
French had declared war against England, he was chosen
of all others to carry it on to Clive, then in the valley of the
Hooghly. He made the voyage up the Bay of Bengal against
the northeast monsoon in an incredibly short time, by dis-
covering a passage which thereafter rendered winter naviga-
tion of the bay free from great danger. With a fortune

*Walpole, Letters, edited by Toynbee, VII, 112.

t A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation' in
India, I, 411-14 (Fourth edition, London, 1799). The first edition of
the first volume appeared in 1763.

396 LAURENCE STEENE

won in prize-money, Commodore James returned to England
in 1759, married a most attractive wife — Anne, daughter of
Edmond Goddard of Hartham in Wiltshire — and purchased
a villa at Eltham within easy reach of London. Orme's story
of his exploits brought him into quick notice. He became
chairman of the board of directors of the East India Com-
pany; and the king subsequently honoured him with a
baronetcy.

When Sterne knew him, the commodore was living for
the winter in one of the large houses in Gerrard Street, Soho,
suitable for the entertainments expected of him, and for the
reception of visitors from India, who seem to have imposed
upon his hospitality. His wife was a woman of fine man-
ners and character, very fond of a pretty daughter that
reminded Sterne of his own child as she had been in past
years. Once admitted into the family circle, Sterne let no
Sunday pass, unless ill health prevented, without dining
with his dear friends in Gerrard Street. After one of these
visits, he wrote to Lydia: "I wish I had you with me — and I
would introduce you to one of the most amiable and gentlest
of beings, whom I have just been with, * * * a Mrs. James,

the wife of as worthy a man as I ever met with 1 esteem

them both. He possesses every manly virtue honour and

bravery are his characteristicks, which have distinguished

him nobly in several instances 1 shall make you better

acquainted with his character, by sending Orme's History,

with the books you desired and it is well worth your

reading; for Orme is an elegant writer, and a just one; he

pays no man a compliment at the expence of truth.

Mrs. James is kind — and friendly — of a sentimental turn of
mind — and so sweet a disposition, that she is too good for

the world she lives in Just God ! if all were like her, what

a life would this be!" Nothing ever occurred to disturb this
friendship, which continued to the last dismal scene.

Hinners and social functions, so necessary to Sterne's
enjoyment, were checked by the snows of January, which
covered England two or three feet deep. "When we got up
yesterday morning", he wrote to Lord Fauconberg on the
ninth, "the streets were four inches deep in snow it has

THE LAST VOLUME OF TKISTRAM SHANDY 397

set in now with the most intense cold. I could scarse lay in
bed for it, and this morning more snow again." And at the
end of a week, when wild rumours of accidents and sufferings
had reached London: "There is a dead stagnation of every-
thing, and scarse any talk but about the damages done over
the Kingdom by this cruel storm. * * * We had reports
yesterday that the York stage coach with fourteen people
in and about it, were drown 'd by mistaking a bridge — it
was contradicted at night-^as are half the morning reports
in town." During the progress of the storm, while most
people were content to remain indoors and wait for the
inevitable thaw, Sterne ploughed through snow up to his
knees, on an "intensely cold" Sunday morning, to the king's
levee and afterwards on to church, where to his disappoint-
ment few were found in either place. At length a thaw set
in, the streets became passable, though filled with slush, and
everybody who could obtain a ticket, turned out on the night
of the fifteenth for Mrs. Cornelys's great assembly, the first
of the year.

This was just then the most fashionable resort in Lon-
don. "All the high and low demireps of the town", says
Thackeray's Barry Lyndon, "gathered there, from his Grace
of Ancaster down to my countryman, poor Mr. Oliver Gold-
smith the poet, and from the Duchess of Kingston down to
the Bird of Paradise." The woman who called herself Mrs.
Theresa Cornelys had been long known under other names,
as an operatic singer in London and continental theatres.
Abandoning the stage in 1760, she purchased Carlisle House
in Soho, which she turned into an assembly for a "society
of ladies and gentlemen" with herself as manager. Little
noticed at first, the enterprise flourished beyond expectation,
so that she was able to enlarge and redecorate the mansion,
hanging the "vast" assembly room with blue satin and the
rest of the suite with yellow. At appointed times, widely
advertised in the newspapers, Mrs. Cornelys opened her
house to "the nobility and gentry" for "a grand concert of
vocal and instrumental music", to be followed by "a grand
ball", before and after which were served "tea, coffee,
chocolate, and other refreshments". All details of these

398 LAURENCE STERNE

famous nights were planned and carried out under the per-
sonal direction of the hostess herself. "Those Ladies and
Gentlemen", ran the usual advertisement on the day before
an assembly, "who come in carriages * * * are requested
to be very particular in ordering their coachmen to the door
in Soho-square, and with their horses' heads towards Greek

Street; chairs to the usual door. The tickets (which are

limited as to number) will be delivered out this day at
Arthur's in St. James's Street, and at the office in Soho-
square, at a guinea each, which will admit one gentleman
or two ladies. * * * The house will be opened precisely at
nine."* So great was the demand for tickets, though rather
expensive, that they could hardly be obtained either for love
or for money. But Sterne, who had means of finding one
where others complained of failure, made the acquaintance
this year of Mrs. Cornelys, the professional entertainer of
rank and royalty. The next morning he wrote to Lord
Fauconberg briefly but enthusiastically of the occasion, add-
ing a word relative to his patron's brother and family:

"Last night it thaw'd; the concert at Soho top full and

was (this is for the ladies) the best assembly and the best
concert I ever had the honour to be at. Lady Anne had the
goodness to challenge me, or I had not known her, she was
so prudently muffled up; Lord Bellasyse, I never saw him
look so well; Lady Bellasyse recovers a marveille — and your
little niece I believe grows like flax."

The literary event for people who frequented Carlisle
House was the appearance of the ninth and last volume of
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, on
Friday, January 30, 1767. t The two-shilling pamphlet,
authenticated by the humourist's signature over the first
chapter, had as motto a sentence which Burton attributed
to Scaliger when beseeching Cardan not to censure him if his
treatise seemed too light: "Si quid urbaniuscule lusum a
nobis, per Musas et Charitas et omnium poetarum Numina,
Oro te, ne me male capias. "% As in the first instalment of his

* Public Advertiser, March 30, 1767.

\ St. James's Chronicle, Jan. 29-31, 1767.

t Anatomy of Melancholy, edited by Shilleto, III, 9. Charitas is> of
course, a misprint for Charites.

THE LAST VOLUME OP TBISTRAM SHANDY 399

book, the author again linked his name with Pitt's, in "A
Dedication to a Great Man", saying prettily, in allusion to
the statesman's recent elevation to the peerage under the title
of Earl of Chatham: "My opinion of Lord *******
is neither better nor worse, than it was of Mr. * * * .
Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and
local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will
pass all the world over without any other recommendation
than their own weight." A few chapters on, Sterne gave his
parting thrust to Warburton, his old friend and enemy, by
expressing the hope that Tristram Shandy, now completed,
would "swim down the gutter of time" along with A Tale
of a Tub and The Divine Legation of Moses.

A fortnight after publication, Sterne informed Panehaud
that the last volume of Tristram Shandy was liked the best
of all by his friends, and requested him, giving thereby an
index of brisk sale, to remit a hundred louis to his wife at
Marseilles. The conclusion of my uncle Toby's amours, we
can well understand, with its nice approaches to forbidden
ground, though never quite reaching there, hit exactly the
tone of society for which the book was written. To their
heart's content, author and reader moved together in these
pages, to use Coleridge's expression, through a sort of moral
twilight, which is neither light nor darkness. But by the
outside public, whose hearts had been corrected by Yorick's
sermons and the death of Le Fever, Sterne was reprobated
in no uncertain language, save for thankfulness that my uncle
Toby had been brought through a severe ordeal, unharmed by
the wiles of Mrs. Wadman. "Censor", for example, charged
Sterne, in Lloyd's Evening Post for March 11-13, with ex-
hausting the salacious wit of England, Prance, and Spain
("where he has been to recruit"), and with now ransacking
"poor old antiquity" as the only storehouse left for him.
"Surely", concluded Censor, "our Spiritual Rulers must
frown at these things." Likewise appeared in the Public
Ledger of March 30, a communication from "Davus", call-
ing upon the Church to intervene. After reading the last
article, a group of strangers actually prepared and sent to
the Archbishop of York a long letter leading up to a hint

400 LAUBENCE STEKNE

that Sterne be unfrocked. The anonymous letter, dated
March 30, 1767, and signed by "several", began and closed
as follows:

"Several well wishers to your Grace, and to religion and
the cause of virtue, modesty, and decency, think it a duty
incumbent on them, consistently with that regard they have
for them, as well as order and right conduct, to refer your
Grace to a letter, signed Davus, in the 'Public Ledger' of
this day, very justly, as they humbly think, animadverting
on the scandal they have long taken and oftener conceived
at the works of 'Tristram Shandy', as written by a clergy-
man and a dignified one, uncensured by his superiors. They
harbour no malice or private peek against him, having no
personal knowledge of him or view by this; but are moved
merely by indignation on seeing the above letter. * * * No
conduct * * * surely more deserves a censure. But whether
private or public, your Grace is best judge of. The former
probably has been bestowed in vain, and the latter may have
a bad effect, by increasing curiosity; yet, perhaps somewhat
more than frowns or contempt should be done, that such
scandal should no longer exist, or religion and the clergy will
be no gainers by it."

The letter was duly received by Archbishop Drummondy
who found nothing to censure, so far as we know, in the con-
duct of Sterne, always a most welcome visitor at Bishop-
thorpe. The old charge of impropriety which was urged by
the anonymous correspondents, had grown stale with the
monthly critics, who were now inclined to accept Sterne in
the character of Harlequin or the English Rabelais. "We
wish", said the Critical Review of the last volume in Feb-
ruary, "that it had been a little better accommodated to the
ear of innocence, virginibus puerisque; but, perhaps, of all
the authors who have existed since the days of Rabelais, none
can with more justiee than Tristram put his arms a-kimbo,
strut through his room and say, 'None but myself can be my
parallel.' " The pages which Sterne left blank were also
thought diverting. The author had played with this jest
before, but in a different manner. According to the earlier
device, the reader was invited to fill in the blank pages with

THE LAST VOLUME OF TBISTRAM SHANDY 401

whatever he might wish in the way of narrative and com-
ment; while in this case Sterne affected to be unable to
compose, when he came to them, the most interesting parts of
my uncle Toby's courtship; and so they were deferred until
he should be in the mood for them. At length he returned
to the missing chapters, and thus succeeded in the feat of
writing a book backwards.

Exclusive of my uncle Toby, the volume contained two
or three pieces of eloquence .that arrested the attention of all
who read. Jenny, who had appeared in the first instalment
seven years before, as a slight and uncertain shadow of Miss
Fourmantelle, reappeared for an apostrophe to time, which
brings all things to an end. Commonplace as the thought is,
Sterne, who felt the nearness of death, lifted it into the
realm of poetic beauty. "Every letter I trace tells me", he
concluded, "with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the
days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than
the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like

light clouds of a windy day, never to return more every

thing presses on whilst thou art twisting that lock,

see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid
adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to

that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.

Heaven have mercy upon us both!" Then there was that
invocation, unsurpassed outside of Fielding, to the "Gentle
Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy
pen of my beloved Cervantes"; which glided into "They
were the sweetest notes I ever heard", and the whole musical
episode of the distressed maid of Moulins. These were the
purple passages which went far and wide through magazines
and newspapers.

The story of Maria, unconnected with all the rest, may be
regarded, if we do not press the point too literally, as an
advertisement of the Sentimental Journey. Though Sterne
was in London for pleasure, he was there for business also.
The Sentimental Journey, which had been in his mind the
previous summer, was clearly delayed a year, that he might
prepare the way for its publication by talk about it and a
preliminary list of subscribers. Nothing could have served

26

402 LATJBENCE STEENE

his purpose better, whether the act were premeditated or not,
than his slipping into Tristram Shandy an episode of his
forthcoming travels, in precisely the same manner as he gave
the public a taste of Torick's sermons years before, when he
let Trim read one to Dr. Slop. It may take something from
the dignity of literature to imagine Sterne availing himself
of the Duke of York's entertainments or of Mrs. Cornelys's
assemblies to recruit his purse, but such was an old custom
not quite dead in the days of the third George. So successful
was the author in his solicitations that he could write to
Panchaud on the thirteenth of February: "I am going to

publish a Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

the undertaking is protected and highly encouraged by all
our noblesse — 'tis subscribed for, at a great rate — 'twill be
an original — in large quarto — the subscription half a guinea

If you can procure me the honour of a few names of

men of science, or fashion, I shall thank you they will

appear in good company, as all the nobility here almost have
honoured me with their names." Before the winter was
over, Sterne had a vision of a thousand guineas from his
new book.

To judge from the list as it appeared the next year, few
were approached who failed to permit Sterne to take down
their names, though a letter to Sancho points to some labour
over gathering in the scattered half-guineas. After thank-
ing the negro for leaving at his lodgings several subscriptions
of the Montagu family, Sterne reminded him that the
transaction was only half completed: "You have something
to add, Sancho, to what I owe your good-will also on this
account, and that is to send me the subscription money, which
I find a necessity of dunning my best friends for before I

leave town to avoid the perplexities of both keeping

pecuniary accounts (for which I have very slender talents),
and collecting them (for which I have neither strength of
body or mind) and so, good Sancho, dun the Duke of Mon-
tagu, the Duchess of Montagu, and Lord Montagu for their
subscriptions, and lay the sin, and money with it too, at my
door."

CHAPTER XIX

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA
MARCH— OCTOBEE 1767

In the Anglo-Indian society which gathered round the
Jameses, Sterne met the Eliza of the Sentimental Journey,
the one great passion of his life, shining through a decade of
flirtations. At first sight, Eliza appeared to him as a rather
plain young woman who affected the air and simper of fine
ladies bent upon conquest; but the story of her misfortunes,
as he heard it from Mrs. James, awakened his compassion;
he began to study her face and eyes under more favourable
conditions, much as my uncle Toby did the widow Wadman's;
and then all was over with Yorick's poor, weak heart. "Not
Swift", he was soon writing to her, "so loved his Stella,
Scarron his Maintenon, or "Waller his Sacharissa, as I will
love and sing thee, my wife elect ! All those names, eminent
as they are, shall give place to thine, Eliza."

The woman whom Sterne placed among the famous
presences which poets and men of letters have felt in their
work was Elizabeth, wife of Daniel Draper, who since his
youth had held various appointments in the service of the
East India Company. She belonged to the Sclaters originally
of Slaughter, in Gloucestershire, where they had been lords of
the manor for three centuries.* From various branches
of the family which took root in the neighbouring shires
and in northern England, came a line of Oxford and Cam-
bridge men distinguished as scholars and divines. The head
of the family is now Lord Basing of Hoddington, near Odiham
in Hampshire, whose father, .George Sclater-Booth, the poli-
tician, was elevated to the peerage on his succession to the

* The story of Mrs. Draper's early life and of her family is based
upon her letters and other unpublished material now at Hoddington,
eked out by accessible genealogies like Burke's Peerage.

403

404 LAURENCE STERNE

Hampshire estates. Going back to the eighteenth century,
Christopher Sclater, Vicar of Loughton and Chingford by
Epping Forest, married Elizabeth, daughter of John May,
Esq., of Worting, Hants. Of their thirteen children, the
fifth son, May Sclater, born October 29, 1719, became the
father of Sterne's Eliza. When a young man, May Sclater
went out to India, where he married a Miss Whitehill, whose
father and uncle were likewise in the India service. Of the
marriage were born three daughters while the family was
living on the Malabar Coast, at Anjengo and other factories
of the East India Company, — Elizabeth, who gave as her
birthday October 5, 1744, and her younger sisters, Mary and
Louisa. After growing into girlhood among the Malabars,
of whom Elizabeth became very fond, the children were all
sent to England for their education under the protection of
the Sclaters. Their mother seems to have died when they
were very young, and the father perhaps saw none of them .
out of their teens. While in England, Elizabeth apparently
stayed much in London with her aunt Elizabeth, a prim
woman, married to Dr. Thomas Pickering, Vicar of St.
Sepulchre's, a kindly humourist, who appreciated the girl's
smartness. But she liked best her cousins Tom and Bess,
the children of her uncle Kichard of Hoddington, the present
seat of the family. Between her^ and Tom existed, so her
letters read, rather more than cousinly affection. "All my
kin's folk", she wrote to him after the mistake of her mar-
riage, "are in comparison of thee, as trifling * * * as my
little finger in comparison to my two bright eyes."

The girl, already vain, I fancy, of her bright eyes and
round face, was placed in some school for the "frivolous
education" accorded to "girls destined for India". "The
generality of us", she said in sorrowful retrospect, "* * *
were never instructed in the importance of any thing, but
one worldly point, that of getting an establishment of the
lucrative kind, as soon as possible, a tolerable complection,
an easy manner, some degree of taste in the adjustment of
our ornaments, some little skill in dancing a minuet, and
singing an air." Having received no training in "useful em-
ployments", she returned, in the autumn of 1757, to India,

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 405

from which she had been away long enough to be struck by

novel sights and customs. Her father was then settled at

Bombay, in the best house of the city, "where a great deal

of company", she wrote, "comes every day after dinner".

Among these guests was Daniel Draper, a promising official

of the East India Company, to whom she was married on the

twenty-eighth of the following July, when not yet fourteen

years old. Her husband, her elder by full twenty years, was

near akin, brother or cousin, to Sir William Draper, who

captured Manila and otherwise distinguished himself in the

East. The year after her marriage, Daniel Draper was

appointed Secretary to the Government at Bombay, where

he was stationed mostly, save for short intervals at Surat and

Tellicherry, during the rest of his life in India. His faithful

services were eventually rewarded by a seat in the Council

and the post of Accountant General. If a somewhat heavy

official, he was described by a friend and admirer as "a very

mild and good-humoured man".* There was nothing unusual

about the Draper marriage, which now seems so ill-sorted in

respect to age; and we may suppose that neither husband

nor wife found it too uncomfortable. A son was born in

1759, and two years afterwards a daughter named for her

mother — the Eliza or Betsey of several tender letters. In

1765, the Drapers brought their children to England that

they might be given an English education. After travelling

about for several months in visits to their relatives and to

various watering-places as far north as Scarborough, Draper

went back to Bombay, leaving his wife in England to see the

children established in school and to recover her health, which

had been weakened by child-bearing and the heats of India.

The children were fixed in school at Salt Hill with or near

an aunt on her mother's side, while Mrs. Draper moved about

pleasantly among the Sclaters and Whitehills, still having

most regard for Tom, now Thomas Mathew Sclater, heir to

Hoddington. As the intimate friend of Mrs. James, she

made a wide circle of friends, which included, besides the

Anglo-Indians coming and going, families like the Nunehams

* David Price, Memoirs * * * of a Field Officer of the Indian Army,
61 (London, 1831).

406 LAUEENCE STEENE

of Nuneham Hall, Oxford, among whom she was known,
because of her beauty and free attractive manners, as the
belle Indian. Everybody in the intimacy of the James house-
hold— Lord Ossory as well as John Dillon, Esq. — seems to
have liked and nattered her ; one admirer telling her that she
ought to go on the stage, and another that her forte was
literature. To say truth, her conversation, if we may judge
from her letters, readily caught the accent of sentimental
society. Although a mere girl, she had read widely in the
poets and essayists of the Queen Anne period ; she quoted her
authors aptly, and quickly developed under Sterne's influence
into a Blue-Stocking.

The first meeting between Sterne and Mrs. Draper took
place soon after the author reached London in January, 1767 ;
if we may imagine it so, at one of the Sunday dinners in
Gerrard Street. Advances beyond casual acquaintance were
made by Sterne a fortnight or so later, when he sent Mrs.
Draper a full set of his works accompanied by the following
letter :

"Eliza will receive my books with this. The sermons

came all hot from the heart. 1 wish that I could give them

any title to be offered to yours. The others came from the

head 1 am more indifferent about their reception.

"I know not how it comes about, but I'm half in love

with you 1 ought to be wholly so for I never valued

(or saw more good qualities to value) or thought more of one
of your sex than of you ; so adieu. Tours faithfully, if not
affectionately, L. Sterne."

Mrs. Draper, honoured by the attentions of an author
whom all the polite world was courting, met her admirer half
way. In return for the familiar Eliza, she was soon referring
to him as Yorick, "the mild, generous, and good", or calling
him by a pretty fancy her Bramin, the source of all wisdom.
The new title, lifting him into the spiritual caste of India,
pleased Sterne, who repaid the compliment by addressing
Eliza as his Bramine, or counterpart in the knowledge of the
heart. "With no thought of concealing their sentimental
attachment as it grew apace, Mrs. Draper sent a copy of
Sterne's letter to her cousin Tom, and Sterne wrote to his

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 407

daughter Lydia of his "dear friend". They visited places
of amusement together or with Mrs. James, dined tete-a-tete
at Sterne's lodgings in Bond Street, and made excursions
to Salt Hill and Enfield Wash to visit the Draper children.
Every morning there passed between them letters arranging
for the disposal of their day or announcing the peremptory
call of other engagements. Wherever Sterne went to dine,
Mrs. Draper was "the star that conducted and enliven 'd the
discourse". At Lord Bathurst's, says one of Sterne's letters,
"I talked of thee an hour without intermission with so much
pleasure and attention, that the good old Lord toasted your
health three different times ; and now he is in his eighty-fifth
year, says he hopes to live long enough to be introduced as a
friend to my fair Indian disciple, and to see her eclipse all
other nabobesses as much in wealth, as she does already in

exterior and (what is far better) in interior merit. 1 hope

so too. This nobleman is an old friend of mine. You

know he was always the protector of men of wit and genius ;
and has had those of the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope,
Swift, Prior, &c. &c. always at his table." On these occa-
sions Sterne sometimes took along a letter or two of Eliza's,
from which he read scraps to his more intimate friends, who,
like himself, found the style "new" and the sentiments
"very good and very elegantly expressed". "Who taught
you", asked the flatterer, "the art of writing so sweetly,

Eliza? You have absolutely exalted it to a science!"

For further inspiration, he gave Mrs. Draper his portrait,
which she placed over her writing-desk; and in return she
sat for him, it would seem, to Cosway, the famous miniaturist.
The little portrait of Mrs. Draper, apparently a miniature, in
which she appeared simply dressed as a vestal, without her
usual adornments of "silks, pearls, and ermines", Sterne
showed to half the town, and communed with it alone in the
quiet of Bond Street, whence he wrote to Mrs. Draper on a
morning when at the height of his infatuation: "Your
eyes and the shape of your face (the latter the most perfect
oval I ever saw) * * * are equal to any of God's works in
a similar way, and finer than any I beheld in all my travels."
While Sterne was thus cantering up and down deliriously

408 LAURENCE STERNE

with his passion, Mrs. Draper was suddenly prostrated by a
letter from her husband asking for her immediate return
to India. The news of her illness came as a shock to Sterne
on a February morning when, on making his usual call, he
was told by the house-maid that Mrs. Draper was not well
enough to receive him. After passing a sleepless night, he
despatched a note in remonstrance the next day, saying in
part: "Remember, "my dear, that a friend has the same right
as a physician. The etiquettes of this town (you'll say) say

otherwise. No matter! Delicacy and propriety do not

always consist in observing their frigid doctrines." For six
weeks thereafter, the frigid doctrines of the town being
neglected, Sterne watched Mrs. Draper through her illness
and convalescence, so fearful at times of the issue that he
prepared an elegy upon her in case it should be needed.
"She has a tender frame", he wrote to Lydia, copying out
the verses, "and looks like a drooping lily, for the roses are
fled from her cheeks 1 can never see or talk to this incom-
parable woman without bursting into tears 1 have a

thousand obligations to her, and I owe her more than her

whole sex, if not all the world put together She has a

delicacy in her way of thinking that few possess our con-
versations are of the most interesting nature, and she talks
to me of quitting this world with more composure than others

think of living in it. -I have wrote an epitaph, of which

I send thee a copy. 'Tis expressive of her modest worth —

but may heav'n restore her! and may she live to write mine.

'Columns, and labour 'd urns but vainly shew
An idle scene of decorated woe.
The sweet companion, and the friend sincere,
Need no mechanic help to force the tear.

'In heart-felt numbers, never meant to shine
'Twill flow eternal o'er a hearse like thine;
'Twill flow, whilst gentle goodness has one friend,
Or kindred tempers have a tear to lend. ' ' '

Mrs. Draper's other friends likewise sympathised keenly
with the distress of a young woman who must leave her chil-

THE JOUENAL TO ELIZA 409

dren and go back to a husband for whom she had no affection,
and to a dull life which offered no scope for her talents.
In short, nothing but the duty of the wife to her husband
under the law called her oversea to India. Her father, it
must be inferred from the silence of her letters at this period,
had been dead for several years; and in the career of her
favourite sister, the unhappy woman read her own fate.
Mary, or Polly as the family called her, was like Mrs. Draper
a girl of gay and lively spirits, who jested with her uncle
Thomas while lighting his pipe for him in the seclusion of
St. Sepulchre's. After the usual trivial education, she also
returned to India, to become the wife of Rawson Hart
Boddam of Bombay. For two years she bore up against the
enervating climate and childbirth until she became a shadow
of her former self, and then died under most melancholy cir-
cumstances. Of all Mrs. Draper's friends, none — except an
unnamed family, perhaps the Pickerings — was disposed to
criticise her reluctance to run the risks of India in her present
condition; and yet none could quite venture the advice that
she disobey her husband. At the last moment, however, when
Mrs. Draper again fell ill, Sterne went so far as to say : "Put

off all thoughts of returning to India this year.

Write to your husband — tell him the truth of your case.

If he is the generous, humane man you describe him

to be,. he cannot but applaud your conduct." If the expense
of another year in England would be troublesome, he de-
clared in an exalted mood of generosity, that he stood ready
to subscribe his whole subsistence, and then sequester his
livings, if necessary, rather than see such "a creature * * *
sacrificed for the paltry consideration of a few hundreds".
Should Mrs. Draper wish it, his wife and daughter might be
summoned over to take her with them to the south of France,
where he himself could join them for a winter in Florence
and Naples.

However sincere Sterne's proposals may have been, they
were clearly impracticable. Though his attachment to Mrs.
Draper may have caused, except in the case of one nameless
family, no adverse comment among those who understood the
relation between them, it was yet quite impossible for Sterne

410 LAURENCE STEENE

to take under the protection of his purse another man's wife.
Such a course would not have been tolerated by public
opinion, lenient as it was outside of a few strict conventions.
So it was settled that Mrs. Draper should sail for India on
the Earl of Chatham, which was expected to leave Deal,
weather permitting, early in April. In the meantime little
presents passed between Mrs. Draper and her friends. For
Mrs. James and the Nunehams, as well as for Sterne, she had
her portrait painted in the dress and attitude each most
admired. Besides the "sweet sentimental picture" left with
Sterne, she presented him with "a gold stock buccle and
buttons", which he rated above rubies, because they had been
fitted to him by the hand of friendship and thereby conse-
crated forever. At last came the farewell visit to the chil-
dren, whom Mrs. Whitehill generously offered to take under
her personal charge. "God preserve the poor babies",
wrote Mrs. Draper, "and may they live to give satisfaction
to their parents — and reflect honour on their amiable
protectress!"

In order to make the necessary preparation for a long
voyage, Mrs. Draper took post-chaise for Deal some ten days
in advance of the probable sailing, in company with a Miss
Light, who was going out to Madras to marry George Strat-
ton, a councillor of the Bast India Company. Sterne, as he
records the parting scene, handed Mrs. Draper into the chaise
and then turned away to his lodgings in anguish of spirit,
never to see his friend again, unless perchance he made a
visit to the seaport the next week with the Jameses. For a
day or two he lay ill of another hemorrhage, during the fever
of which he fancied that Mrs. Draper returned just as he
was dying, clasped him by the knees, and raising her "fine
eyes", bade him be of comfort. None the less for his weak-
ness, he sent Mrs. Draper every morning a letter directing
her movements as if present and arranging from a distance
many little details of her cabin. A pianoforte which she
took along with her to Deal, proving to be, as soon as set up,
out of tune, Sterne purchased for her a hammer and pliers,
and told her to tune the instrument from her guitar that it
might again vibrate sweet comfort to their hopes. "I have

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 411

bought you", says the letter further, "ten handsome brass
screws, to hang your necessaries upon: I purchased twelve;
but stole a couple from you to put up in my own cabin, at

Coxwould 1 shall never hang, or take my hat off one of

them, but I shall think of you. * * * I have written, also, to
Mr. Abraham Walker, pilot at Deal, that I had dispatched
these in a packet, directed to his care; which I desired he
would seek after, the moment the Deal machine arrived. I
have, moreover, given him directions, what sort of an arm-
chair you would want, and have directed him to purchase the
best that Deal could afford, and take it, with the parcel, in
the first boat that went off. Would I could, Eliza, so supply
all thy wants, and all thy wishes." With these and similar
tokens of friendship went much advice as to Mrs. Draper's
conduct on shipboard, which, though variously phrased, was
always pitched to the following key: "Be cautious * * *
my dear, of intimacies. Good hearts are open, and fall
naturally into them. Heaven inspire thine with fortitude,
in this, and every deadly trial! Best of God's works, fare-
well! Love me, I beseech thee; and remember me for ever!

* * * Adieu, adieu! and with my adieu let me give thee

one streight rule of conduct, that thou hast heard from my
lips in a thousand forms — but I concenter it in one word,
Reverence Thyself. * * * Blessings, rest, and Hygeia go
with thee! May'st thou soon return, in peace and affluence,
to illumine my night ! I am, and shall be, the last to deplore
thy loss, and will be the first to congratulate and hail thy
return."

The Earl of Chatham, with other outbound ships, set sail
from Deal on Wednesday, April 3, 1767, under a brisk north-
east wind which bore them quickly through the Channel.*
At the point of departure, it was Mrs. Draper's hope that
her husband would soon retire from the service, or at least
permit his wife to revisit her friends and children in the
course of a year or two. There were times also when Sterne
encouraged her imagination to play with more distant con-
tingencies, as in a curious summary of their attachment
* Lloyd's Evening Post, April 3-6.

412 LAUBENCE STEENE

which he wrote out for her a few weeks later anent references
to their passion in the Sentimental Journey:

"I have brought", he said in a sketch which was to be
submitted for her approval before it should be entrusted to
posterity, "I have brought your name Eliza! and Picture
into my work — where they will remain — when you and I

are at rest forever Some annotator or explainer of my

works in this place will take occasion, to speak of the Friend-
ship which subsisted so long and faithfully betwixt Yoriek

and the Lady he speaks of Her Name he will tell the

world was Draper — a Native of India— married there to a
gentleman in the India Service of that Name — who brought
her over to England for the recovery of her health in the
year '65 — where she continued to April the year 1767. It
was about three months before her Keturn to India, That our
Author's acquaintance and hers began. Mrs. Draper had a
great thirst for knowledge — was handsome — genteel — en-
gaging— and of such gentle dispositions and so enlighten 'd

an understanding, That Yoriek (whether he made much

opposition is not known) from an acquaintance soon be-
came her Admirer they caught fire, at each other at the

same time and they would often say, without reserve to

the world, and without any Idea of saying wrong in it, That

their affections for each other were unbounded Mr.

Draper dying in the year ***** this Lady return 'd to

England, and Yoriek the year after becoming a Widower

they were married — and retiring to one of his Livings in
Yorkshire, where was a most romantic Situation — they lived
and died happily — and are spoke of with honour in the
parish to this day."

II

Just before their separation, Sterne and Mrs. Draper
spent a Saturday evening together in London, when or at
another time it was agreed that each should keep an intimate
journal in order that they might have "mutual testimonies
to deliver hereafter to each other" on the glad day of their
reunion. While Mrs. Draper was at Deal making ready for

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 413

her voyage to India, Sterne sent her all that he had written;
and on the thirteenth of April he forwarded by a Mr. Watts,
then departing for Bombay, a second instalment of his
record. These two sections of Sterne's journal — and like-
wise all of Mrs. Draper's, for we know that she kept one —
have disappeared. The extant part begins on the thirteenth
of April, 1767, and comes down to the fourth of August in
the same year. The sudden break was occasioned by the
expected return of Mrs. Sterne from France, the thought of
whose presence, to say nothing of the reality of it, the author
felt as a restraint upon his fancy. A postscript was added
on the first of November announcing that Mrs. Sterne and
Lydia, after some weeks with him at Coxwold, had just gone
to York for the winter, while he himself was to remain at
Shandy Hall to complete the Sentimental Journey. There
were hints that the journal would be resumed as soon as the
author reached town in the following January. But Sterne
probably did not carry out his intention. At least nothing
is known of a later effort.

And what we have of the journal has lain until recently
in hidden places. Sterne doubtless took the manuscript, as
he thought of doing, with him to London in the winter of
1767-68, where, we may fancy, it was discovered among his
papers after death and turned over to the Jameses. Fav-
ouring this surmise is the fact that when the journal came to
light, it was in the company of two letters from Sterne to these
friends, an unfinished scrawl from him to Eliza's husband,
and a long "ship letter", amounting almost to an autobi-
ography, from Mrs. Draper to Mrs. James. All these manu-
scripts drifted into the library of a Mr. Gibbs of Bath, and
upon his death, to a room set apart by the family for waste
papers, old letters, and old commonplace books regarded as of
no documentary value whatever. While playing in the room
one day and looking about for paper "to cut up into spills
to light candles with", Mr. Gibbs 'a son Tom, a boy of eleven,
popped upon the names of Yorick and Eliza, which he had
seen before, and pulled out the journal and letters as too
good for candle lighters. Sterne's letters may not be exactly
adapted to the perusal of children, but had not this boy —

414 LAXJEENCE STEENE

Thomas Washbourne Gibbs — known his Sterne, the world
would have lost a most illuminating document. Hearing in
May 1751 that Thackeray was to include Sterne among his
English Humourists, the second Mr. Gibbs sent the curious
journal and other pieces up to the novelist for use in his
famous portrait of Yorick. It is rather strange that Thack-
eray, though he thanked Mr. Gibbs for the courtesy, then
made no reference to the journal in his lecture on Sterne
and Goldsmith, but reserved his private information for a
terrific assault upon Sterne in a Roundabout several years
later. Except for Thackeray's mere mention of the journal
which had been lent him by "a gentleman of Bath" (the
passage was afterwards suppressed*), nothing was publicly
known concerning the manuscripts until March, 1878, when
Mr. Gibbs read before the Bath Literary Institution a paper
on "Some Memorials of Laurence Sterne," the substance
of which was printed in The Athenceum for March 30, 1878.
On the death of Mr. Gibbs in 1894, the manuscripts passed
under his bequest to the British Museum. The journal
covers, besides an introductory note and a lone entry at the
end, seventy-six pages of writing with about twenty-eight
lines to the page, all in Sterne's own hand. The leaves are
folio in size, and except in the case of the first and the last,
both sides are written upon. As if designed for publication,
the manuscript contains numerous blots and interlineations
for better phrases, in addition to the introductory note, which
was clearly framed to mystify the general reader, who in those
days took pleasure in a preface like the following:

"This Journal wrote under the fictitious names of Yorick
and Draper — and sometimes of the Bramin and Bramine —
but 'tis a Diary of the miserable feelings of a person sepa-
rated from a Lady for whose Society he languish 'd The

real Names — are foreigne — and the account a copy from a

French Manuscript, — in Mr. S 's hands but wrote as

it is, to cast a Viel [sic] over them There is a Counter-
part— which is the Lady's account [of] what transactions

*For the original passage, see "A Eoundabout Journey: Notes of
a Week's Holiday" (Comhill Magazine, November, 1860). Two letters
from Thackeray to Gibbs are preserved with the Gibbs MSS. at the
British Museum (Additional MSS., 34527).

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 415

dayly happened — and what Sentiments occupied her mind,

during this Separation from her admirer these are worth

reading the translator cannot say so much in favour of

Yorick's which seem to have little merit beyond their honesty
and truth."

To vary Sterne's phrasing, the Journal to Eliza (as we
may style the document with Swift's Journal to Stella in
memory) is a record of personal incidents accompanied by
the sensations and fancies that arose out of them day by day,
sometimes hour by hour, in a mind losing its poise under the
subtile influences of passion and disease. It is the emotional
history lying behind and thus explaining in a measure the
style, tone, and mood of the Sentimental Journey, of which
the author regarded Mrs. Draper as the main inspiration.
"Were your husband in England", he wrote to her at Deal
while gazing at her portrait, "I would freely give him five
hundred pounds (if money could purchase the acquisition),
to let you only sit by me two hours in a day, while I wrote
my Sentimental Journey. I am sure the work would sell
so much the better for it, that I should be reimbursed the
sum more than seven times told." In order to keep her
image before him through the next months, he purchased
charts and maps whereby he might follow her ship every
day, wondering where she was and what she was doing; and
when tired of this, he fell to imagining that she was still by
him, talking to him, and overlooking his work. "I have
you more in my mind than ever", he wrote long weeks after-
wards, "and in proportion as I am thus torn from your

embraces I cling the closer to the Idea of you. Tour

Figure is ever before my eyes — the sound of your voice
vibrates with its sweetest tones the live long day in my ear —
I can see and hear nothing but my Eliza."

The first pages of the journal are taken up with details
of an illness which threatened to put an end to Sterne's life.
Already "worn out both in body and mind" by a long stretch
of dinners, Sterne completely broke down under the strain
of Mrs. Draper's departure for India. "Poor sick-headed,
sick-hearted Yorick ! " he exclaims, ' ' Eliza has made a shadow
of thee! * * * how I shall rally my powers alarms me."

416 LAURENCE STEENE

Recovering sufficiently from his first hemorrhage to go about,
he imprudently dined with Hall-Stevenson at the Brawn's
Head on the twelfth of April and supped at the Demoniac's
lodgings in the evening with "the whole Pandemonium
assembled". For this indulgence he "paid a severe reckon-
ing all the night", and "got up tottering and feeble" in the
morning, resolved to dedicate the day (which was Sunday)
"to Abstinence and reflection". At night came on a fever
which kept him in for two days more, during which he read
over and over again Mrs. Draper's letters, filing them away;
and dosed himself with Dr. James's Powder, a popular
remedy of the period, which, so said the advertisements, would
allay "any acute fever in a few hours though attended by
convulsions". This nostrum, which Madame Pompadour
took in her last illness and which was destined to kill poor
Goldsmith a few years later, working differently upon Sterne,
brought him to his feet for a day or two, so that he was able
to set up his carriage in preparation for the journey home in
a style suitable to his dignity.

It was, however, very dangerous, as Sterne discovered, to
go out immediately after taking a concoction so strongly
diaphoretic in its action as was the mysterious powder.
While trying his horses in the park — described as an "ex-
ceeding good" pair when they were sold the next year —
he caught a severe cold, which sent him to bed "in the most
acute pain". To satisfy his friends, he summoned two able
members of the faculty — a physician and a surgeon — with
whom there was a lively contention when the sick man
learned their diagnosis of his case and the kind of treatment
that it involved:

"We will not reason about it, said the Physician, but you

must undergo a course of Mercury. I'll lose my life first,

said I — and trust to Nature, to Time — or at the worst —

to Death. So I put an end with some Indignation to the

Conference. * * * Now as the father of mischief would have
it, who has no pleasure like that of dishonouring the right-
eous— it so fell out, That from the moment I dismiss 'd my
Doctors — my pains began to rage with a violence not to be
express 'd, or supported every hour became more intol-

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 417

lerable 1 was got to bed — cried out and raved the whole

night — and was got up so near dead, That my friends in-
sisted upon my sending again for my Physician and Surgeon.

1 told them upon the word of a man of Strict honour,

They were both mistaken as to my ease but tho' they had

reason 'd wrong-Athey might act right."

Thus brought to bay by sharp suffering, Sterne at once
parted with twelve ounces of blood under the lancet of the
eminent surgeon in order to quiet what was left in him.
The next day the two gentlemen reappeared with a demand
for more of Yorick's thin blood; and after their second visit
his arm broke loose from their bandage, with the result that
he nearly bled to death during the night before he was aware
of the accident. All nourishment, including his four o'clock
dish of tea, was denied him, with the exception of water-
gruel, which he abhorred worse than the ass's milk he had
drunk on former occasions. This lowering treatment, which,
like the method practised by the famous Dr. Sangrado upon
Spanish ecclesiastics, sought to displace the patient's blood
with water, reduced Sterne to so great weakness that he
momentarily feared that the breath which he was drawing
would be the last . for which he had strength. " I 'm going ' ',
he wrote on a morning as he gasped out a farewell to Eliza,

"I'm going "; but he was able to add as the day wore

on, "Am a little better so shall not depart as I appre-
hended." In spite of the prohibition, he managed to have,
through the kindness of Molly the house-maid, his afternoon
tea and soon his boiled fowl and "dish of macaruls", whereby
he improved so rapidly that a week later "my Doctors", says
the journal, "stroked their beards, and look'd ten per cent
wiser upon feeling my pulse, and enquiring after my Symp-
toms". As their final prescription, they insisted upon
thrusting down his throat Van Swieten's Corrosive Mercury,
as if they were bent upon sublimating him to "an ethereal
substance". His doctors finally dismissed, he experimented
on his own account with a French tincture called L'Extraite
de Satume, and ordered his carriage for a drive about town.

In sickness as in health, Sterne was overwhelmed with
attentions. Mrs. James, missing him at her Sunday dinner,

27

418 LATJRENCE STERNE

sent her maid to enquire after his health and to bid him
preserve a life so valuable to herself and to Eliza. The
next day forty people of fashion came to his bedside; and
thereafter his room was "allways full of friendly Visitors",
and his "rapper eternally going with Cards and enquiries".
"I should be glad", was his comment, "of the Testimonies
— —without the Tax." As soon as he could be helped into
his carriage, he visited Mrs. James to thank her for her daily
messages and to weep with her over the loss of Mrs. Draper.
It was a scene of woe which better than all else lets the
reader into the morbid state of the emotions that gave birth
to the story of poor Maria in the Sentimental Journey:

"Tears ran down her cheeks", wrote Sterne after the
ordeal with Mrs. James was over, "when she saw how pale

and wan I was never gentle creature sympathized more

tenderly 1 beseech you, cried the good Soul, not to regard

either difficulties or expences, but fly to Eliza directly

I see you will dye without her save yourself for her

how shall I look her in the face? What can I say to her,
when on her return I have to tell her, That her Torick is no

more! Tell her my dear friend, said I, That I will meet

her in a better world and that I have left this, because

I could not live without her; tell Eliza, my dear friend,

added I That I died broken hearted — and that you were

a Witness to it. As I said this, she burst into the most

pathetick flood of tears — that ever kindly Nature shed.

You never beheld so affecting a Scene 'twas too much for

Nature! Oh! she is good — I love her as my Sister! and

could Eliza have been a witness, hers would have melted
down to Death and scarse have been brought back, an Extacy

so celestial and savouring of another world. 1 had like to

have fainted, and to that Degree was my heart and soul
affected, it was with difficulty I could reach the street door;
I have got home, and shall lay all day upon my Sopha—
and to morrow morning my dear Girl write again to thee;
for I have not strength to drag my pen."

Three weeks were still necessary before Sterne felt strong
enough to venture on the journey homewards. During the
period of convalescence, with its frequent relapses from over-

THE JOUBNAL TO ELIZA 419

exertion, he occasionally dined ■with a friend or sat for an
hour or two at Banelagh, or drove on a morning through
Hyde Park, where he encountered one day, as amusingly
related in the journal, a former passion who was taking the
air on horseback. In their flirtation, the unknown woman
whom Mrs. Draper had supplanted in Yorick's affections,
had figured fancifully as the Queen of Sheba who once came
to Jerusalem with camels, spices, and gold, to prove the wis-
dom of Solomon. Of the modern Sheba and Solomon, says
the journal:

"Got out into the park to day Sheba there on Horse-
back; pass'd twice by her without knowing her — she stop'd
the third time — to ask me how I did — I would not have ask'd
you, Solomon! said she, but your Looks affected me for you'r
half dead I fear 1 thank 'd Sheba very kindly, but with-
out any emotion but what sprung from gratitude Love

alas! was fled with thee Eliza! 1 did not think Sheba

could have changed so much in grace and beauty Thou

hadst shrunk poor Sheba away into Nothing, but a good

natured girl, without powers or charms 1 fear your wife

is dead; quoth Sheba. No, you don't fear it Sheba, said I,

Upon my word Solomon ! I would quarrel with you, was

you not so ill If you knew the cause of my Illness, Sheba,

replied I, you would quarrel but the more with me You

lie, Solomon! answered Sheba, for I know the Cause already

— and am so little out of Charity with you upon it That

I give you leave to come and drink Tea with me before you
leave Town, * * * and so canter 'd away."

Whether Sheba and Solomon enjoyed a dish of tea
together before the latter left town, our narrative does not
relate; but the visit was unlikely, for Sterne's last week in
London was occupied with formal leave-takings among
friends in higher station. To John Dillon, Esq., the "gentlest
and best of souls", was sent a pretty note congratulating him
on his successful suit for the hand of a "fair Indian", some
friend of Eliza's, while himself must "go bootless home";
and to Mrs. Draper he wrote under the stimulant of the
Extraite de Saturne a long letter, which was to go overland
by way of Aleppo and Bussorah, that it might await her on

420 LATJBENCE- STERNE

her arrival in India. During his illness had come an anxious
enquiry from the Earl of Shelburne, Secretary of State for
the Colonies, who was recruiting at Bath after the labours
and levees of a hard season. In return Sterne thanked him
for "numberless and unmerited civilities", and recast for
his lordship's entertainment the whimsical account given in
the journal of his troubles with the doctors. Finally, he
attended Court on his last Sunday in town, and accepted
invitations for large dinner parties from "seven or eight
grandees", among whom was Lord Spencer, who presented
him on the evening before his departure with "a grand
Ecritoire of forty guineas".

The last glimpse of Sterne in London this year occurs
under date of Friday morning, the twenty-second of May, as
he sat in his lodgings hurriedly scrawling off replies to fare-
well messages which awaited him on his return from Lord
Spencer's, while his chaise and horses stood outside ready
to bear his "poor body to its legal settlement". "I am ill,
very ill", he wrote at parting, "I languish most affectingly

1 am sick both soul and body." Owing to his extreme

weakness, nearly seven days were required for a journey
which travellers usually performed in two or three. Com-
pletely exhausted by the time he drove into Newark on
Saturday evening, he was compelled to remain over Sunday,
whence was despatched, before setting forward, the follow-
ing characteristic note to Hall-Stevenson, descriptive of his
fatigues and his miserable condition on the road thus far:

"Newark, Monday, ten o'clock in the morn.

"My Dear Cousin, 1 have got conveyed thus far like

a bale of cadaverous goods consigned to Pluto and company

lying in the bottom of my chaise most of the route, upon

a large pillow which I had the prevoyance to purchase before

I set out 1 am worn out — but press on to Barnby Moor

to night, and if possible to York the next. 1 know not

what is the matter with me — but some derangement presses

hard upon this machine still I think it will not be overset

this bout. My love to Gilbert. We shall all meet from

the east, and from the south, and (as at the last) be happy

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 421

together My kind respects to a few. 1 am, dear Hall,

truly yours, L. Sterne."

Too ill to reach York on Tuesday, Sterne was forced to
halt at Doncaster, where he passed two nights with the Arch-
bishop of York, who was then staying at his house near the
town. This was the first meeting between Sterne and Dr.
Drummond since the anonymous letter from London asking
that the profane parson be unfrocked. If any mention was
made of the incident, it passed off in jest, for each was
devoted to the other. "This good prelate", Sterne remarked
in the journal, "who is one of our most refined Wits and
the most of a gentleman of our order — oppresses me with his

kindness he shews in his treatment of me, what he told

me upon taking my Leave — that he loves me, and has a

high Value for me his Chaplains tell me, he is perpetually

talking of me and has such an opinion of my head and heart
that he begs to stand Godfather for my next Literary pro-
duction." Without any reserves, Sterne showed the arch-
bishop, his lady, and sister the portrait of Eliza, and related
the story of his friendship with the original. Becoming a
little stronger by Thursday, he drove through to Coxwold
that day and went directly to bed on Van Swieten's Corrosive
Mercury. Only rest, temperance, and good hours, it proved,
were needed to reinstate Sterne in his usual health and
spirits. At the end of three weeks, he cast to the dogs the
medicines which were tearing his frame to pieces, began to
drink ass's milk, and concluded that he would not descend
to Pluto for a year at least or, on a nearer reckoning as it
turned out, until he had trailed his pen through the Senti-
mental Journey.

There were days when he felt as well as at any time since
leaving college and when he looked forward to a summons
from Mrs. Draper to meet her in the Downs and bring her
home as his wife. In the meantime, whether for one or for
five years, he would enjoy himself to the full, accepting, with
resignation, health and sickness like the periodical returns of
light and darkness. It is altogether a delightful picture
which we have of Sterne as he settled into this mood for his

422 LAUEENCE STEENE

gumma's task, varied by excursions with his friends. "I
am in the Vale of Coxwould", he wrote in his journal to
Eliza when summer was advancing, and similarly in a letter
to his friend Arthur Lee, "and wish you saw in how princely

a manner I live in it 'tis a Land of Plenty 1 sit down

alone to Venison, fish or wild foul — or a couple of fouls —
with curds, and strawberrys and cream, (and all the simple

clean plenty which a rich Valley can produce, with a

Bottle of wine on my right hand (as in Bond street) to

drink your health 1 have a hundred hens and chickens

about my yard and not a parishioner catches a hare, a

rabbit or a Trout — but he brings it as an offering In

short 'tis a golden Valley — and will be the golden Age when
you govern the rural feast, my Bramine."

Anticipating the golden age, Sterne rearranged and re-
decorated Shandy Hall — more in fancy, perhaps, than in
fact — that it might become a fit habitation for its mistress.
"I have this week finished", records the journal only ten
days after Sterne's arrival, "a sweet little apartment which
all the time it was doing, I flatter 'd the most delicious of

Ideas, in thinking I was making it for you "Tis a neat

little simple elegant room, overlook 'd only by the Sun —
just big enough to hold a Sopha; for us — a Table, four

Chairs, a Bureau, and a Book case. They are to be all

yours, Room and all — and there Eliza! shall I enter ten

times a day to give thee Testimonies of my Devotion

Was't thou this moment sat down, it would be the sweetest
of earthly Tabernacles." '."Tis a little oblong room", the
narrative goes on into further details, "with a large Sash
at the end — a little elegant fireplace — with as much room to

dine around it, as in Bond street But in sweetness and

Simplicity, and silence beyond any thing. Oh my Eliza!

— I shall see thee surely Goddesse of this Temple, and the

most sovereign one, of all I have — and of all the powers
heaven has trusted me with." Off from the temple — or sit-
ting room, to write plainer English — were to be other rooms
dedicated to Mrs. Draper, adds the journal later in the
season, saying: "I * * * am projecting a good Bed-chamber
adjoing it, with a pretty dressing room for you, which

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 423

connects them together — and when they are finish 'd, will
be as sweet a set of romantic apartments, as you ever beheld

the Sleeping room will be very large — The dressing room,

thro' which you pass into your Temple, will be little— but
Big enough to hold a dressing Table— a couple of chairs,
with room for your Nymph to stand at her ease both behind
and on either side of you — with spare Eoom to hang a dozen
petticoats — gowns, &c — and Shelves for as many Band-
boxes."

Mrs. Draper's apartments were to be enriched with many
little gifts of Sterne's own devising, besides more costly
presents from his friends, which would be placed in due time
at her disposal. If she were a good girl, she might hang her
cabinet with "six beautiful pictures" which he had just
received from Rome of the "Sculptures upon poor Ovid's
Tomb, who died in Exile, though he wrote so well upon the
Art of Love"; and on her table might rest "a most elegant
gold snuff box" valued at forty guineas, which a gentleman
— Sir George Macartney, it would seem, — was having fab-
ricated for Sterne at Paris. On the outside was to be an
inscription in Sterne's honour, and within the cover a por-
trait of Eliza. In like manner Sterne adorned his study
with numerous trinkets given him by Mrs. Draper as pledges
of affection, never forgetting to take her portrait from his
neck or pocket and to place it upon the table before him, that
he might look into "her gentle sweet face", as he wrote of
the fair Fleming, the beautiful grisette, or the heart-broken
Maria. There were indeed moments bordering upon hallu-
cination, when Mrs. Draper seemed to enter his study without
tapping and quietly take a chair by his side, to overlook his
work and talk low to him in counsel for hours together. At
length the hallucination would pass, and the figure of Mrs.
Draper would fade into a melancholy cat sitting and purring
at his side, and looking up gravely into his face as if she
understood the situation. "How soothable", remarked
Sterne on one of these occasions, "my heart is, Eliza, when
such little things sooth it! for in some pathetic sinkings I

feel even some support from this poor Cat 1 attend to her

purrings and think they harmonize me they are

424 LAUEENCB STEENE

pianissimo at least, and do not disturb me. Poor Yorick!

to be driven, with all his sensibilities, to these resources

all powerful Eliza, that had this Magical authority over him,
to bend him thus to the dust!"

In one of his pathetic sinkings, Sterne so far lost self-
control as to draft a letter (which was probably never sent)
to Eliza's husband, hinting at better care of her health and
explaining his interest in her. It was evidently a rather
difficult exercise in composition, for Yorick begins a sentence,
breaks it off, starts in anew, draws pen through word and
phrase once more, and finally passes into chaos on arriving
at the verge of a proposal that Mrs. Draper be permitted to
return to England and live under his platonic protection.
As well as can be made out, the curious letter was intended
to run somewhat as follows :

"I own it, Sir, that the writing a Letter to a gentleman I

have not the honour to be known to a Letter likewise

upon no kind [of] business (in the Ideas of the world) is a
little out of the common course of Things but I'm so my-
self and the Impulse which makes me take up my pen

is out of the common way too — for [it] arises from the honest
pain I should feel in avowing so great esteem and friendship
as I do for Mrs. Draper, if I did not wish and hope to extend

it to Mr. Draper also. I fell in Love with your Wife but

tis a Love, you would honour me for for tis so like that I

bear my own daughter, who is a good creature, that I scarse

distinguish a difference betwixt it that moment would

have been the last of my acquaintance with my friend (all
worthy as she is).

"I wish it had been in my power to have been of true
use to Mrs. Draper at this Distance from her best Protector

1 have bestowed a great deal of pains (or rather I should

[say] pleasure) upon her head her heart needs none-

and her head as little as any Daughter of Eve's, and indeed
less than any it has been my fate to converse with for some

years God preserve her. 1 wish I could make myself

of any service to Mrs. D. whilst she is in India .and I in

the world for worldly affairs I could be of none.

'I wish you, dear Sir, many years happiness. Tis a

"i

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 425

part of my Litany to pray to heaven for her health and Life

She is too good to be lost and I would out [of] pure zeal

t[ake] a pilgrimage to Mecca to seek a Medicine."*

Partly breaking from the obsession of Mrs. Draper's
image, Sterne made several excursions during the summer.
He was twice at Crazy Castle — a week near the end of June
for recuperation, and three or four days midway in July, on
a special summons to come over for a large party of "the
most brilliant "Wits of the Age", including, said the news-
papers, Garrick and Colman the dramatist. While at Skelton,
he dined with "Bombay-Lascelles", an old acquaintance of
Mrs. Draper as well as of himself, who, back from India, had
taken a house two miles away; and there was "dining and
feasting all day" with Mr. Charles Turner of Kirkleatham,
than whom none of the Yorkshire gentlemen entertained more
lavishly, and none was married to a more beautiful wife.
These visits mark the last time that Sterne and his friends
were to race chariots along the beach by Saltburn "with one
wheel in the sea and the other in the sand". On taking final
leave of Skelton, Hall-Stevenson accompanied him home to
Shandy Hall for a few days' rest preliminary to several short
trips together. They passed a whole day at Bishopthorpe
with the Archbishop of York, who honoured Sterne with a
subscription to the Sentimental Journey on imperial paper ;
then they put off to Harrogate, where they drank the waters
through a week at the height of the season, and thence they
returned to York for the summer races. At York was
delivered to Sterne, two hours after his arrival, as if timed to
it, the first news from Mrs. Draper since she sailed from
Deal. It was the journal of her voyage, in two long letters,
as far as Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands and to some
point across the line, where a Dutch ship, returning from
India, took aboard the Earl of Chatham's mail. How
Sterne's heart was upset when he broke the "dear packets"
alone in his lodgings, may be left to his journal to relate :

" I cannot give vent to all the emotions I felt even before
I open 'd them — for I knew thy hand— and my seal — which
was only in thy possession 0 'tis from my Eliza, said I.

* This letter forms a part of the Gibls MSS.

426 LAURENCE STERNE

1 instantly shut the door of my Bed-chamber, and

ordered myself to be denied and spent the whole evening,

and till dinner the next day, in reading over and over again
the most interesting account — and the most endearing one

that ever tried the tenderness of man. 1 read and wept —

and wept and read till I was blind then grew sick, and

went to bed — and in an hour call'd again for the Candle.
* * * 0 my Eliza! thou writest to me with an Angel's pen
— and thou wouldst win me by thy Letters, had I never seen
thy face or known thy heart."

All summer long, letters came in from friends to join
them at Scarborough, but he waited until the full season,
when he went over as the guest of Dr. Jemmet Brown, Bishop
of Cork and Boss. Writing to Mr. and Mrs. James of the
visit, Sterne said: "I was ten days at Scarborough in Sep-
tember, and hospitably entertained by one of the best of our
Bishops; who, as he kept house there, press 'd me to be with

him and his household consisted of a gentleman, and two

ladies — which, with the good Bishop and myself, made so

good a party that we kept much to ourselves. 1 made in

this time a connection of great friendship with my mitred
host, who would gladly have taken me with him back to
Ireland." The two ladies were Lady Anne Dawson and
Sterne's old friend, Mrs. Vesey, both of whom were at
Scarborough for the restoration of their nerves. They
amused themselves by standing on the cliff until they were
giddy, as they watched "the poor Bishop floundering and
sprawling" in the sea; and in the evening were tea-parties,
and excursions in their chaises.* Before the company
broke up, the good bishop made Sterne "great offers" if he
would settle in Ireland, and requested the honour of marry-
ing him to Mrs. Draper as soon as all obstacles should be
removed. With Dr. Brown's offer came another from a
friend in the south, who would have Sterne exchange Sutton
and Stillington for a parish in Surrey, only thirty miles
from London and valued at three hundred and fifty pounds
a year. Under the second arrangement, Sterne was to retain,

* Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, edited by Montagu Pennington,
III, 320 (London, 1809).

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 427

as explained to Mrs. Draper, Coxwold and his prebend ; but
in his present weakened state of body and mind, he was
unable to go through the details of the transfer. "I could
get up fast", he wrote for Mrs. Draper, "the hill of prefer-
ment, if I chose it — but without thee I feel Lifeless and

if a Mitre was offer 'd me, I would not have it, till I could
have thee too, to make it sit easy upon my brow."

Mrs. Draper was thus never long absent from Sterne's
imagination. Wherever he went, he always took with him
his journal, writing in it nearly every day, and Eliza's por-
trait, which was passed round the table at Skelton and Kirk-
leatham, while all the guests, even the ladies, "who hate grace
in another", drank to the health of the original. Visits
to his best friends were only distractions which drew him
from the quiet of Coxwold, with which, as it was now haunted
by Mrs. Draper's spirit, he was never so much in love.
"0 'tis a delicious retreat", he exclaimed on returning from
Skelton, "both from its beauty, and air of Solitude; and so
sweetly does every thing about it invite your mind to rest
from its Labours and be at peace with itself and the world

That 'tis the only place, Eliza, I could live in at this

juncture. 1 hope one day you will like it as much as your

Bramin." Until that day should arrive, the apartments set
aside for Mrs. Draper were to be occupied by himself. Her
likes and dislikes, so far as he remembered them from casual
conversation, were consulted in purchasing a chaise for driv-
ing about the parish with her by his side in fancy. Her
favourite walk, like his own, would likely be to a secluded
"convent", as he called it, doubtless the romantic ruins of
Byland Abbey under a spur of the Hambleton hills two
miles away. Anticipating the morning when Mrs. Draper
should visit the ruins with him, he plucked up one day the
briars which grew by the edge of the pathway, that they
might not scratch or incommode her when she should go
swinging upon his arm. And before the summer was over,
he built for his future companion a pavillion in a retired
corner of his house-garden, where he was wont to stroll or
sit in reverie during the heat of the day or in the evening

428 LAURENCE STERNE

twilight, waiting for a day's sleep whence he might awake
and say: "Behold the Woman Thou hast given me for Wife."

Ill

Sterne was destined, however, to behold on waking from
his visions, not Mrs. Draper bending over him with her large
languishing eyes, but the plain, every-day woman who had
been given him for wife twenty-five years before. In short,
Mrs. Sterne was hastening home post-chaise from France.
The collapse of all his fancies Sterne took mainly in good
part, commenting gaily, as he anticipated it, upon "the last
Trial of conjugal Misery", which he wished to have begin
"this moment that it might run its period the faster".

Mrs. Sterne, it will be recalled, was intending to stay in
southern France for a year or two longer; but soon after
hearing that her husband had fallen under the spell of a
Mrs. Draper, she changed her mind. The news was brought
to her early in February by an English traveller who crossed
her path at Avignon on the road to Italy. Though she told
the busybody "that she wished not to be informed and
begged him to drop the subject", the rumour made her so
uneasy that Lydia was forthwith directed to enquire about it
of her father. Sterne's reply that he had indeed a friend-
ship for Mrs. Draper, "but not to infatuation", could hardly
be accepted, in the light of subsequent letters describing her
as an "incomparable woman", "a drooping lily", etc.; for
Mrs. Sterne had heard these very phrases before her mar-
riage, and knew what they meant. Her suspicions were fur-
ther aroused by the infrequency of her husband's letters and
by delays in remittances from Panchaud and Foley, all of
which in her opinion argued neglect. When called to account
for his conduct, Sterne informed his wife through Lydia
that she was getting ninepence out of his every shilling, and
that the post, not himself, was responsible for the irregular
arrival — and perhaps loss — of his letters. Amid these mis-
understandings, Sterne was glad to receive a hint that they
would all be cleared up by the return of his wife and
daughter to Coxwold for the summer. "For God's sake

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 429

persuade her", Sterne wrote to Lydia of his wife near the
first of April, "to come and fix in England, for life is too
short to waste in separation— — and whilst she lives in one
country, and I in another, many people suppose it proceeds

from choice besides, I want thee near me, thou child and

darling of my heart."

But Sterne's attitude towards the return of his wife and
daughter was reversed by subsequent letters from them out-
lining their plans. They were coming home, it was made
clear to him, merely for a visit at his expense without the
slightest intention of resuming their former life at York and
Coxwold. After a few months with him, they would go
back to Prance, where they were to leave behind them all
their clothes, plate, and linen ; and in order that they might
never again be incommoded by the want of money, the
demand was made upon Sterne that he should purchase for
them an annuity of £200 in the French funds. This was
certainly a proposition at which a country parson receiving
a few hundred pounds a year from his books might well
balk. All his friends commiserated with him, advising him
to sell "my life dear and fight valiantly in defence both of
my property and life". Hall-Stevenson, outdoing the rest,
made Yorick's conjugal tribulations the theme of "an affect-
ing little poem" to circulate among the Demoniacs. Sterne,
likewise falling into the jest of the situation, poured forth
pages of self-pity over madame's approaching reconciliation
with her husband. To Mrs. James he wrote: "I went five
hundred miles the last Spring, out of my way, to pay my

wife a week's visit and she is at the expence of coming

post a thousand miles to return it. What a happy pair!

however, en passant, she takes back sixteen hundred

pounds into France with her— and will do me the honour
likewise to strip me of every thing I have." And similar,
but more amusing in its details, is the record of the journal
for Mrs. Draper: "I shall be pillaged in a hundred small

Item's by them — which I have a Spirit above saying, no

to; as Provisions of all sorts of Linnens — for house use —
Body use — printed Linnens for Gowns — Mazareens of Teas
— Plate, (all I have but six Silver Spoons) In short I

430 LAURENCE STERNE

shall be pluck 'd bare — all but of your Portrait and Snuff
Box and your other dear Presents — and the neat furniture

of my thatch 'd Palace and upon these I set up Stock

again, Eliza."

Notwithstanding his humorous murmurings, Sterne ac-
quiesced after a month or two in his wife's plan for a set-
tlement, and awaited her arrival for the purpose more
complacently perhaps than is implied by a literal reading
of his journal. He was quite willing to be fleeced or to have
his back flayed, provided he could escape with his life. All
else Mrs. Sterne might gather up and decamp with, whither
she list, on condition that she trouble him no more. His
apparent indifference, which no one will take too seriously,
did not prevent him from sending to his wife and daughter
his customary directions for a safe and comfortable journey.
Lydia was told to throw all her rouge pots into the Sorgue
before setting out from Avignon, for no rouge should ever
invade Shandy Hall; but she might bring along her lively
French dog, though he was rather "devilish" the last time
Sterne saw him, as a companion for the lonely house-cat
purring by Yorick's side, if she would promise to guard
against "a combustion" when the two animals met. On
reaching Paris, the travellers were to go at once to Pan-
chaud's, who would offer them every civility, fill their purses,
and advise them about the proposed annuity. While in the
city they were to make all necessary purchases of clothing;
and as soon as they arrived in London, Mrs. Sterne was to
take out a life insurance policy in favour of Lydia. Finally,
they must inform him, several posts ahead, of their coming,
that he might be in York to meet them with his chaise and
long-tailed horses, neither of which had they ever seen.
Though the chaise had already been given to Mrs. Draper in
the fancies which he was weaving about her, he could yet say
to his wife and daughter, "The moment you both have put
your feet in it, call it hereafter yours".

Mrs. Sterne and Lydia arrived in York, where Sterne
awaited them, on the last day of September; and the next
morning they enjoyed their first ride in the new chaise over
to Coxwold. Sterne was a little fearful that he might not

THE JOURNAL TO ELIZA 431

find grace with madame, but there occurred no untoward
incident, much less a scene. The greeting between Sterne
and his daughter, now a young woman, was most cordial.
"My Lydia", Sterne wrote immediately to his Parisian

banker, "seems transported with the sight of me. Nature,

dear Panchaud, breathes in all her composition; and except
a little vivacity — which is a fault in the world we live in —
I am fully content with her mother's care of her." He
likewise intended it as a compliment when a few days later
he added in the postscript of a letter to Mrs. James: "My

girl has returned an elegant accomplished little slut my

wife — but I hate to praise my wife 'tis as much as decency

will allow to praise my daughter." The united family
apparently passed a pleasant month together, during which
the details of Mrs. Sterne's plan were discussed and worked
out to a slightly different issue. A prospective purchaser
was found for a part or the whole of their real estate, which
was to be turned into an annuity for Lydia ; and Mrs. Sterne
was promised a liberal allowance; These financial arrange-
ments and other stipulations, as finally agreed upon when
husband and wife decided to go apart after a marriage of
twenty-five years, are all summed up in a postscript to the
journal under the date of the first of November:

"All, my dearest Eliza, has turn'd out more favourable

than my hopes Mrs. S. and my dear Girl have been

two Months [a slip for one month] with me and they have
this day left me to go to spend the Winter at York, after hav-
ing settled every thing to their heart's content Mrs. Sterne

retires into France, whence she purposes not to stir, till her

death, and never, has she vow'd, will [she] give me

another sorrowful or discontented hour. 1 have conquerd

her, as I would every one else, by humanity and Generosity.

— and she leaves me, more than half in Love with me.

She goes into the South of France, her health being insup-
portable in England and her age, as she now confesses,

ten Years more than I thought, being on the edge of sixty

so God bless — and make the remainder of her Life

happy — in order to which I am to remit her three hundred
guineas a year — and give my dear Girl two thousand pounds,

432 LAURENCE STERNE

which, with all Joy, I agree to,-4rat tis to be sunk into an
annuity in the French Loans."

Behindhand a month with the Sentimental Journey,
Sterne did not accompany his wife and daughter to York,
but had them driven in by his man. None of the three
wished the approaching separation to be regarded as quite
final. The version of it which was to go to the world, Sterne
gave out in a letter to Arthur Lee, descriptive of the affecting
scene between himself and Lydia as the chaise stood by the
door of Shandy Hall :

"Mrs. Sterne's health is insupportable in England.

She must return to France, and justice and humanity forbid
me to oppose it. 1 will allow her enough to live com-
fortably, until she can rejoin me. My heart bleeds, Lee,

when I think of parting with my child 'twill be like the

separation of soul and body — and equal to nothing but what
passes at that1 tremendous moment; and like it in one respect,

for she will be in one kingdom, whilst I am in another.

You will laugh at my weakness — but I cannot help it — for

she is a dear, disinterested girl As a proof of it — when

she left Coxwould, and I bade her adieu, I pulled out my
purse and offered her ten guineas for her private pleasures

her answer was pretty, and affected me too much: 'No,

my dear papa, our expences of coming from France may
have straiten 'd you — I would rather put an hundred guineas

into your pocket than take ten out of it.' 1 burst into

tears."

CHAPTER XX

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
JUNE 1767— FEBETJAEY 1768

Apart from its strict biographical details, the journal to
Eliza has several interesting aspects. The chief of them no
one can regard as literary, though the manuscript offers an
opportunity here and there for studying Sterne's method
of composition from the first hastily written sentence down
to the smoothing out of phrase and clause with new woMs in
a new order. The manuscript also casts a curious side-light
on the psychology of Sterne's plagiarisms. In his Sermons
and in Shandy, he stole, it is charged, from others; in the
journal he stole from himself. A good passage or a good
story, whether originally his own or somebody else's, he could
not keep from reworking when occasion called for it, any
more than could Charles Lamb. A letter, for example, to
Arthur Lee describing the golden age at Coxwold, was ad-
justed a month later to the journal ; and in reverse order, the
Shandean account of Sterne's illness, first recorded in the
journal, was retold in a letter to the Earl of Shelburne.
The dear Eliza of the journal was frequently transformed
into dear Lydia for letters to his daughter, each being "the
sweet light burthen" which he hoped to bear in his arms up
the "hill of preferment"; and, stranger still, long passages
were taken from the stale letters to Miss Lumley, written as
far back as 1740, and transferred to Mrs. Draper, as appli-
cable, with few changes, to the new situation. It was hardly
more than writing "Molly" for "Fanny", or "our faithful

friend Mrs. James" for "the good Miss S ", and the old

"sentimental repasts" with Miss Lumley in Little Alice Lane
— house-maid, confidante, and all — could be thereby served
up anew for Mrs. Draper in Bond Street.

But the real significance of the journal to Eliza lies not

28 433

434 LAURENCE STERNE

in its literary artifice nor in its parallelisms, which would be
disreputable were the process not so amusing; it lies in the
fact that it completely reveals the pathological state of the
emotions — long suspected but never quite known to a cer-
tainty— whence sprang the Sentimental Journey, during the
composition of which Sterne was fast dying of consumption,
barely keeping himself afoot much of the time with ass's
milk; for when he ventured upon a more substantial diet,
there stared him in the face the dreadful corrosive mercury.
Each work is the counterpart of the other. In the journal,
we have the crude expression of the maudlin sentiment which
often accompanies a wasting disease; in the Sentimental
Journey, we have sentiment refined to an arg*g§^exquisite as
to place the author among the first masters of English prose.
In real life, Sterne bursts into a flood of tears while convers-
ing with Mrs. James over their separation from Eliza — he
almost faints, and with difficulty reaches the door; in fancy,
he weeps his handkerchief wet over the distracted maid of
Moulins who has lost her lover. In the journal, he plucks
up the briars along the path which Mrs. Draper will some-
time tread by his side; in the Sentimental Journey, it is a
nettle or two growing upon the grave of a poor Franciscan
whose feelings he has wounded. In the one he communes
with the house-cat as she lies purring by the fire; in the
other with a travel-worn German peasant sitting on the stone
bench of the inn by Nampont, and weeping at the death of
the donkey which has been his faithful companion all the
way to the shrine of St. James of Compostella and thus far
on the long journey home to Franconia. Eliza, her minia-
ture always opposite to him on his desk when he took pen in
hand, sat for the slightly varied portraits of the brown lady,
the grisette, and the fille de chambre of the Sentimental
Journey, all of whom awaken precisely the same sexual
emotions, never quite gross but sometimes suggestive of gross-
ness. It is not the strong, healthy sexuality of Smollett or
Fielding, but rather the sexuality of waste and enervation,
such- as inspired the harmless passion ^olFnS^_JlcanBJL. a
feeble stir of the blood which Sterneielt as he belri % ha,nd
of a beautiful woman, stooped to fasten her shoe-buckle, or

THE SENTIMENTAL, JOURNEY 435

slspt, in a. room near Trior at ^ wayside inn. It is all quite
innocent provided one takes it so.

A book of travels, we remember, had been in Sterne's
mind ever since the winter at Toulouse, and in the succeed-
ing instalment of Tristram Shandy he tried his hand, we also
remember, at one based upon his journey from Calais to
Paris and south to Avignon and across the plains of Lan-
guedoc. His ideal at that time was comedy running into
farce and satire. To this end he played with current guide
books, whose videnda were eventually set aside in favour of
ludicrous incidents by the way, accompanied with the claim,
gravely expressed, that he loved better than all else dusty
thoroughfares along which there was nothing to see, and so
nothing to relate, beyond an occasional beggar, pilgrim, or
fig-vender on the road to Beaucaire. The idea was well
enough worked out in a narrative memorable for Old Honesty
and the vintage dance; but with the plan as a whole, details
neglected, there was nothing very novel or striking. It was
in fact only a whimsical variant, however well carried
through, of the comic adventures which everybody had read
in Cervantes, Scarron, or Fielding. Clearly not satisfied with
the outcome, Sterne made another tour abroad to gain, besides
his health, fresh incidents for a second journey which should
include Italy also.

In the meantime Dr. Smollett, likewise sick and in fear
of death, had gone over nearly the same route and brought
out two volumes of Travels through France and Italy.
Keen as was the novelist's intelligence, his irritable temper,
accentuated by overstrained nerves, warped everything he
saw. Crossing Smollett's path somewhere, most likely, we
have said, at Montpellier, Sterne introduced him into the
Sentimental Journey as a type of the "splenetic traveller"
under the appropriate name of "Sjnelfungus", and as a fit
companion to "Mandungus". or "the proud traveller" — a
thin disguise for Dr^Safemel Sharp, another sick surgeon
who was publishing his impressions of the Continent.* "The
learned Smelfungus", says Sterne, "travelled from Boulogne
to Paris — from Paris to Home — and so on — but he set out
* Letters from Italy (London, 1766).

436 LAURENCE STERNE

with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he pass'd by

was discoloured or distorted He wrote an account of

them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable,/
feelings." The inn at a seaport town near Genoa where the"
novelist took up his night's lodging was kept, says Smollett's
record, by a butcher who "had very much the looks of an
assassin. His wife was a great masculine virago, who had
all the air of having frequented the slaughter-house. * * *
"We had a very bad supper, miserably dressed, passed a very
disagreeable night, and paid a very extravagant bill in the
morning. I was very glad to get out of the house with my
throat uncut". The women of Italy Smollett found "the
most haughty, insolent, capricious, and revengeful females
on the face of the earth". The Tuscan speech, so often
praised for its sweetness, was to his ear harsh and dis-
agreeable. "It sounds", he said, "as if the speaker had lost
his palate. I really imagined the first man I heard speak in
Pisa had met with that misfortune in the course of his
amours." While in Florence, he was attracted to the Uffizi
gallery by the fame of the Venus de Medici; but he at once
discovered, to quote again famous phrases, that there is "no
beauty in the features" of the marvellous statue, and that
"the attitude is awkward and out of character." When he
reached Rome, he was "much disappointed at the sight of
the Pantheon which looks", said the sick traveller, "like a
huge cockpit, open at the top. * * * Within side it has much
the air of a mausoleum. It was this appearance which, in all
probability, suggested the thought to Boniface IV, to trans-
port hither eight-and-twenty cart-loads of old rotten bones,
dug from different burying-places, and then dedicate it as a
church to the blessed Virgin and all the holy martyrs."

The reaction of Sterne's mind upon Smollett's gave him
the point of view for which he had been long striving. Like
Smollett's, his travels were to deal with observation, personal
and direct, rather than with incident, comic or exciting; but
"my observations", he said, "shall be altogether of a differ-
ent cast than any of my forerunners", just as my tempera-
ment, he might have added, differs from theirs. In
distinction from the jaundiced traveller, to whose eye all

THE SENTIMENTAL JOUBNEY 437

things, they say, look yellow, Sterne proclaimed himself the
sentimental traveller, .or. one who, disregarding alT"tKe~rest.
'seeks and finds, wherever chance takes him, only those objects
and_ incidents, which., excite- and— keep_.^oin&. a .sexiest, of
ple^nrahj£.,.«m©ti«HiS: — "Was I in a desert", he said, "I
would find out wherewith in it to call forth my affections

If I could not do better, I would fasten them upon some

sweet myrtle, or seek some melancholy cypress to connect

myself to 1 would court their shade, and greet them

kindly for their protection 1 would cut my name upon

them, and swear they were the loveliest trees throughout the
desert: if their leaves wither 'd, I would teach myself to
mourn, and when they rejoiced, I would rejoice along with
them." His_djesign-in-writin^_jh^.-iSe^4«e,M.toL- Journey., he
told Mrs. James, "was to ^teaghjjs to love the. world and our
fellow j3rjaJaiEgsJbetter.~than~w,e. d.o- — —so it .runs, most, upon
those gentler passions and- af£ectionsr which aid so jnnch,. to
it". There was also a more personal aim hinted at here and
there in Sterne's letters. Fueling the approach ofjiejaJ;luJie<
wished. toleave__ih^jBrorld with a different impressicgiwlhan
had *been made_uppn_ it by Tristram Shandy. Above his
humour, which had led him into many indecorums of speech,
he prized his sensibility, which had kept his heart right, as
everybody might now see for himself. That side of his talent
which the public had admired in the story of Le Fever was
now to find expression on a larger scale. Incidentally the
book-was to- -be so-chaste that it might lie upon anv. lady's
table^.joa?«-h'ea-venJiave mergyugQQ_hgr imagination.

Subdued to this mood bv passion and disease, Sterne
began the Sentimental Journey within a week of his arrival
at Coxwold towards the end of May. Ten days were passed
in sorting and arranging the miscellaneous notes and sketches
of his travels, which had long lain by him, before he was
ready to write the introductory chapter immortalising the
name of Eliza. At first, progress was slow because of extreme
weakness and the intrusion of Mrs. Draper's image in and
out of season. "Cannot write my Travels", was the pretty
complaint on the third of June, "or give one half hour's
close attention to them, upon thy Account, my dearest friend

438 LAUEENCE STEBNE

Yet write I must, and what to do with you, whilst I

write 1 declare I know not 1 want to have you ever

before my Imagination and cannot keep you out of my

heart or head. * * * Now I must shut you out sometimes

or meet you Eliza! with an empty purse upon the

Beach." At length health mended; the journal to Eliza,
which kept his heart bleeding, was closed up; and all his
energies were bent upon the book that he must have ready
for his subscribers by the next winter. "It is a subject",
Sterne informed Mrs. James when well into it, "which works
well, and suits the frame of mind I have been in for some
time past." During the period of composition, the manu-
script was submitted to the Demoniacs and other "Geniuses
of the North", who declared it, Sterne assured Becket in
September, "an Original work and likely to take in all Kinds
of Headers "; but "the proof of the pudding", the author
added, "is in the eating".*

The even course of Sterne's pleasure at his task was
broken by a week's illness in August "with a spitting of
blood", and by the visit of hjs-jdf£_and_daughter, to whose
comfort and entertainment was devoted the entire month of
October. To make up for lost time, Sterne spurred on his
Pegasus violently through November, "determined not to
draw bit", until his book should be completed. Utterly
exhausted by this final spurt, he wrote to the Earl of Shel-
burne at the end of the month: "Torick * * * has worn out

both his spirits and body with the Sentimental Journey

'tis true that an author must feel himself, or his reader will

not but I have torn my whole frame into pieces by my

feelings." Thereupon followed the inevitable collapse — a
succession of hemorrhages with fever, which confined Sterne
to his room for three weeks. As soon as the fever left him,
his old buoyancy of spirit brought him to his feet again, and
he set off for London in company with Hall-Stevenson, who
was going up to see through the press a volume of facetious
verse-tales called MaJcarony Fables. The journey was mere
madness on Sterne's part, for nothing was left of him but a
shadow. "I am weak", the Jameses were warned in advance
* Notes and Queries, second series, IV, 126.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOUKNEY 439

while he was resting at York, "I am weak, my dear friends,

both in body and mind so God bless you you will see

me enter like a ghost so I tell you before-hand not to be

frightened. ' '

But besides having a book to publish, Sterne still believed
that he might once more recruit mind and body, as had so
often happened in past years, by a change of scene and faces.
For months his friends had been calling him to London, all
eager to hear him read from his sentimental travels amid
the old intimacies. Lord Shelburne, he hoped, would be
pleased with his book, and then his labour would not have
been in vain. The earl must, it was urged, make the ac-
quaintance of the Jameses before the winter was over. "You

would esteem the husband, and honour the wife she is

the reverse of most of her sex they have various pursuits

— she but one — that of pleasing her husband." Sir George
Macartney wrote to Yorick from St. Petersburg, where the
diplomat was negotiating a commercial treaty with Russia;
and after his return Sterne congratulated him upon the suc-
cess of his mission, adding "I shall have the honour of
presenting to you a couple of as clean brats as ever chaste
brain conceiv'd." Macartney, Craufurd, and Sterne were to
renew their convivial friendship. A certain "Sir W", per-
haps Sir William Stanhope, brother to Chesterfield and one
of the Delaval set, came north during September for a week
at Scarborough, stopping at York, where he and Sterne met
over their "barley water" at Bluitt's Inn in Lendal. This
gentlemaa„w_as.. to .be convinced by the Emiimental Journey
that sensibility hag. np.Jdnship jpnjth^ensualjfy. "I take
heav'n to witness", Sterne replied to him on being rallied
for the freedoms of Tristram Shandy, "I take heav'n to wit-
ness, after all this badinage my heart is innocent and the

sporting of my pen is equal, just equal, to what I did in my
boyish days, when I got astride of a stick, and gallop 'd
away. * * * Praised be God for my sensibility! Though it
has often made me wretched, yet I would not exchange it for
all the pleasures the grossest sensualist ever felt." Among
friends without rank were not forgotten honest Sancho, who
must make his usual morning calls in Bond Street; and

440 LAUEENCE STEENE

Arthur Lee, to whom Sterne was continuing to give expert
counsel in matters of the heart.

Mrs. James was deeply chagrined when she heard a
rumour that Torick had paid a flying visit to London in the
autumn without calling upon her. Sterne set the idle story
at rest, explaining how it all may have come about, and
remonstrating with his friend that she should even fancy
him capable of so great incivility: "Good God! to think I
could be in town, and not go the first step I made to Gerrard

Street! My mind and body must be at sad variance with

each other, should it ever fall out that it is not both the first
and last place also where I shall betake myself, were it only
to say, 'God bless you.' * * * I * * * never more felt the
want of a house I esteem so much, as I do now when I can
hear tidings of it so seldom and have nothing to recom-
pense my desires of seeing its kind possessors, but the hopes
before me of doing it by Christmas." Mrs. Ferguson, the
witty widow who welcomed Sterne to London eight years
before with his first "extraordinary book", was waiting for
January when she might obtain a peep at the Sentimental
Journey. Beyond the widow's name, nothing is known of this
sincere friend to the whole Sterne family. And there was
another unknown woman, a certain Hannah, who, falling
across Sterne's way last season, wished to be still kept in his
memory. Hannah was a sprightly girl, whose chit-chat
amused him and to whom he replied in kind, claiming, on
the receipt of her first letter during the summer, that he
could not exactly place her among the many Queens of Sheba
who had honoured him with visits. "It could not be", he
replied, "the lady in Bond-street [Mrs. Draper], or Gros-

venor-street, or Square, or Pall Mall. We shall

make it out, Hannah, when we meet. * * * How do you do?

Which parts of Tristram do you like best? God bless

you." With the help of another letter from Hannah, he
was able to recall the "good dear girl" and her sister Fanny,
whom the Sentimental Journey, Yorick predicted, "shall
make * * * cry as much as ever it made me laugh, or I'll
give up the business of sentimental writing".

Thus anticipating the pleasure of laying a new book at

THE SENTIMENTAL JOTJENEY 441

the feet of his friends, Sterne drove up to his old lodgings
in Bond Street on the first or second of January, 1768. It
was the worst sort of weather, cold', raw, and damp. In-
fluenza had set in and was carrying o'ff poor people so fast
that the newspapers feared not enough labourers would be
left to do the work of the next summer. Everybody was
warned against exposure to the inclemency of the season.
"Their Majesties", said the newspapers, under date of Mon-
day the fourth of January, "did not attend service yesterday
at the Chapel Eoyal on account of the badness of the weather,
but had private service performed in their apartments at the
Queen's palace." On that Sunday, Sterne, becoming care-
ful of his health for the first time in his life, watched the
rain from his window all day, forgoing the pleasure of a call
on the Jameses and of dining with them and their friends
in the evening. But mindful of the engagement, he sent
over to Gerrard Street the compliments of the new year to
all the household gathered about the firesides — "Miss
Ascpugh the wise, Miss Pigot the witty, your daughter the
pretty, and so on" — with an enclosure for Lord Ossory,
should he be present. On Sterne's table lay scattered cards,
notes, and invitations out, enough to carry him through a
fortnight of dinners. Among them was an urgent request
from Mrs. James for aid in obtaining a ticket to Mrs.
Cornelys's forthcoming assembly. Never before had there
been so great a demand for tickets to this social function,
which was to assume added splendour this year. Mrs. James,
at whose table sat Lord Ossory, had pleaded with all her
friends, and had everywhere failed. Would Mr. Sterne
use his influence? Sterne wrote back that he was not a
subscriber to Soho this year, but that he might be depended
upon to do his best for her. So he began despatching notes
round among his friends; and as they all brought in un-
favourable responses, he set out himself the next morning to
see what he could do by his presence. The episode concluded
pleasantly, if unsuccessfully, with the following letter to the
Jameses, which may be dated Monday, January 4, 1768:

"My dear Friends, 1 have never been a moment at

rest since I wrote yesterday about this Soho ticket 1 have

442 LAURENCE STERNE

been at a Secretary of State to get one — have been upon one
knee to my friend Sir George Macartney, Mr. Lascelles —

and Mr. Pitzmaurice* — without mentioning five more

I believe I could as soon get you a place at court, for every-
body is going but I will go out and try a new circle —

and if you do not hear from me by a quarter after three, you
may conclude I have been unfortunate in my supplications.

1 send you this state of the affair, lest my silence should

make you think I had neglected what I promised but no

— Mrs. James knows me better, and would never suppose it
would be out of the head of one who is with so much truth
her faithful friend. L. Sterne."

Though Sterne felt unequal to a Soho assembly, he was
drawn, so far as health would permit, rather reluctantly into
the old life. If his friends could not have him always at
their tables, they attended him in Bond Street, where was
held every morning a sort of levee. "I am now tyed down",
he complained to the Jameses in February, "neck and heels
(twice over) by engagements every day this week, or most
joyfully would have trod the old pleasing road from Bond
to Gerrard street. * * * I am quite well, but exhausted with

a room full of company every morning till dinner How

do I lament I cannot eat my morsel (which is always sweet)
with such kind friends!" As usual, his guests sent in little
presents for remembrance, or enrolled themselves among his
subscribers, in return for the pleasure of hearing the charm-
ing Torick read from his sentimental travels in advance of
publication. This year he was especially honoured with a

series of prints from "L. S n Esq", as the heading to a

letter has the blundering disguise, but really, I think, from
George Selwyn, the grim wit and politician, who put his
name down for the Sentimental Journey. On receiving the
gift, accompanied by a note proffering friendship, Sterne
replied in his most courteous manner, beginning: "Tour
commendations are very nattering. I know no one whose
judgment I think more highly of, but your partiality for me
is the only instance in which I can call it in question.

* Probably Edwin Lascelles, M.P. for Yorkshire; and Thomas
Fitzmaurice, M.P. for Calue.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOUKNEY 443

Thanks, my good sir, for the prints — I am much your debtor

for them if I recover from my ill state of health and live

to revisit Coxwould this summer, I will decorate my study
with them, along with six beautiful pictures I have already
of the sculptures on poor Ovid's tomb."

There came to Sterne also a much prized gift from over-
seas in the form of a curiously carved walking-stick, double
handled and twisted into all sorts of shapes, which a Dr.
Eustace of North Carolina sent over in company with a letter
giving its history and uses. The colonial physician, after
introducing himself as "a great admirer of Tristram
Shandy" and "one of his most zealous defenders against the
repeated assaults of prejudice and misapprehension", went
on to explain whimsically why the walking-stick should
belong to Sterne. "The only reason", he said, "that gave
rise to this address to you, is my accidentally having met
with a piece of true Shandean statuary, I mean according to
vulgar opinion, for to such judges both appear equally desti-
tute of regularity or design. It was made by a very

ingenious gentleman of this province, and presented to the
late Governor Dobbs, after his death Mrs. D. gave it me:
its singularity made many desirous of procuring it, but I
had resolved, at first, not to part with it, till, upon reflection,
I thought it would be a very proper and probably not an
unacceptable, compliment to my favourite author, and in his
hands might prove as ample a field for meditation as a
button-hole, or a broom-stick."

It was too late for the walking stick of Governor Dobbs
ever to go into Tristram Shandy; but Sterne sent back by
the next ship a meditation, taking, as the physician wished,
the singular gift as a symbol of his book for an attack upon
all who had failed to appreciate its humour. Never quite
sound in his judgment since the old days of his quarrel with
his uncle Jaques, Sterne still imagined that he had been
persecuted through his literary career by a conspiracy
formed against him. Under date of February 9, 1768,
Sterne wrote to Dr. Eustace :

"Sir, I this moment received your obliging letter and
Shandean piece of sculpture along with it, of both which

444 LAUBENCE STERNE

testimonies of your regard I have the justest sense, and
return you, dear Sir, my best thanks and acknowledgement.
Your walking stick is in no sense more Shandaic than in that
of its having more handles than one ; the parallel breaks only
in this, that in using the stick, every one will take the handle
which suits his convenience. In Tristram Shandy the handle
is taken which suits the passions, their ignorance, or their
sensibility. There is so little true feeling in the herd of the
world, that I wish I could have got an act of parliament,
when the books first appeared, that none but wise men should
look into them. It is ,too much to write books, and find
heads to understand them ; the world, however, seems to come
into a better temper about them, the people of genius here,
being to a man on its side ; and the reception it has met with
in France, Italy, and Germany, has engaged one part of the
world to give it a second reading. The other, in order to
be on the strongest side, has at length agreed to speak well
of it too. A few hypocrites and tartuffes, whose approbation
could do it nothing but dishonour, remain unconverted.

"I am very proud, Sir, to have had a man like you on my
side from the beginning; but it is not in the power of every
one to taste humour, however he may wish it; it is the gift
of God: and, besides, a true feeler always brings half the
entertainment along with him; his own ideas are only called
forth by what he reads, and the vibrations within him

intirely correspond with those excited. 'Tis like reading

himself — and not the book.

"In a week's time I shall be delivered of two volumes of
the Sentimental Travels of Mr. Yorick through France and
Italy; but, alas! the ship sails three days too soon, and I
have but to lament it deprives me of the pleasure of pre-
senting them to you.

"Believe me, dear Sir, with great thanks for the honour
you have done me, with true esteem, your obliged humble
servant, Laurence Sterne."

Having uttered his last word on Tristram Shandy, Sterne
was looking forward, as we see, to the Sentimental Journey,
which was to win over the poor remainder of his enemies.
The work had been passing through the press rather slowly,

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 445

owing to the author's numerous corrections in the text,
apparently down to the moment of publication. To judge
from the extant part of the manuscript,* now in the British
Museum, and comprising the first volume as published, Sterne
brought up with him from Coxwold a fair copy in his own
hand for the printer, leaving blank always the versos and
sometimes a recto, with a view to easy changes and addi-
tions. There is a notion, warranted only by Yorick's jesting
remarks, that Sterne was a careless writer who put down and
printed whatever came into his head without premeditation.
How false this notion is I have shown in discussing Tristram
Shandy, whose several instalments were playfully organised,
we concluded, on Locke's theory of associated ideas, while
all details were studied with scrupulous concern for humor-
ous or pathetic effects. Much that was there half guessed
at may be seen in the manuscript of the Sentimental Journey
— a neat, underlying copy, which after six weeks of inter-
mittent labour was covered all over with deletions, and
interlinear substitutions reaching out into margins and blank
pages. Sterne knew, artist as he was, that a point just missed
may sometimes be retrieved merely by a new word or a new
phrase.

It is perhaps saying too much to imply that Sterne had
any occasion in the last stages of his book to retrieve himself
from real failure. Already complete was- that— wonderful
series of portraits, ebbing an3LIBpjyiii.ff-- with the author's
emotions^in the order as we now have them, from the poor
Franciscan, the Flemish lady, and La Fleur, on to the dwarf
and the" beautiful grisette from whom, Yoriek purchased the
gloves^ It is rather that these portraits sometimes needed
here and there just those touches which make for perfection,
No scene in the Sentimental Journey struck the fancy of
Europe more than the exchange of snuff-boxes between
Yorick and Father Lorenzo after their sweet contention.
It led in Germany, few probably know, to the formation of
little coteries for the study of Sterne, the members of which
presented one another with horn snuff-boxes, and promised
to cultivate Yorick's gentleness, content with fortune, and

*Egerton MSS., 1610.

446 LAURENCE STERNE ;

pit|g^aii<1jiarffon for all hijjrnari I. jerrors,* Before turning in
his manuscript to the printer, Sterne hesitated between a
bald relation of the incident and the details as the world
now knows them. In its cancelled form the passage read:
"The monk rubbed his horn box upon his sleeve and pre-
sented it to me with one hand, as he took mine from me in
the other ; and having kissed it, with a stream of good nature
in his eyes he put it into his bosome — and took his leave."
When printed, the passage ran: "The monk rubb'd his horn
box upon the sleeve of his tunick; and as soon as it had
acquired a little air of brightness by the friction — he made
a low bow, and said, 'twas too late to say whether it was the
weakness or goodness of our tempers which had involved us

in this contest But be it as it would he begg'd we

might exchange boxes In saying this, he presented his to

me with one hand, as he took mine from me in the other;
and having kissed it — with a stream of good nature in his
eyes he put it into his bosom — and took his leave." How
much the scene gains by the elaboration every one must feel.
The mendicant who had come to ask an alms, gave instead
all that he had to Yorick, but not until he had heightened
the value of his gift by "a little air of brightness". In view
of what Sterne did here, we wonder whether we should not
regard as a happy afterthought the bit of rust which caught
the eye of the Marquis of E * * * * , as he drew his sword
from its scabbard before the assembled states at Rennes, and,
dropping a tear upon the place, remarked "I shall find some
other way to get it off".

The account of Monsieur Dessein's vamped-up chaise, for
whose sorrowful adventures through the passes of Savoy
and over Mont Cenis Yorick sought to awaken pity, was
rather tame as Sterne originally had it; for he wrote at first:
"Much indeed was not to be said for it— but something
might — and when a few little words will set the poor chaise
of an innocent traveller agoing, I hate the man who can be
a churl of them." Subsequently a clause was crossed out

*Eor the queer story of these Lorenzo orders, see H. W. Thayer
Lawrence Sterne in Germany, 84-89 (New York, 1905) : and J. Longo'
Lawrence Sterne and Johann Georg Jacobi, 39-44 (Wien und Leipzig^

__^- THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 447

and another written in its place, so as to make the whole
read: "Much indeed was not to be said for it — but some-
thing might — and when a few words will rescue misery out
of her distress, I hate the man who can be a churl of them."
On this passage, Thackeray once put the rhetorical question :
"Does anybody believe that this is a real Sentiment? that
this luxury of generosity, this gallant rescue of Misery — out
of an old cab, is genuine feeling." Whether Sterne or
Thackeray was right, it is worth while to observe that the
sentiment was fully premeditated. The sketch of the beau-
tiful Fleming whom Yorick on a sudden turn of his head
met full in the face on his way to Monsieur Dessein's
magazine of chaises, was likewise carefully reworked.
"Heaven forbid!" the strange lady exclaimed in the first
version, "laying her hand upon her eyes". But as this is
not the natural gesture in warding off a threatened blow,
Sterne subsituted "raising her hand up to her forehead". A
moment later Torick took the stranger's hand and led her
towards the remise door in silence; whereof Sterne remarked
that it was one of those situations "which can happen to a
man but once in his life". In after-thought he struck out
the parenthesis, preferring to leave undetermined the rarity
of the occurrence in real life.

The lament of the Franconian peasant over his dead ass
by the roadside caused Sterne much trouble; for several of
the sentences were begun, abandoned, and tried two or three
times over before the sentiment could be rendered precisely
as he wished it. Another perplexity was who should compose
the merry kitchen at Amiens on the evening when La Fleur
pulled out his fife and led off in the dance. At Ihe first
trial Sterne was certain that the "file de chambre, the maitre
d'hotel, the cook, the scullion, etc." would be there; but it
took two more humorous trials to unroll etc. into "all the
household, dogs, and cats, besides an old monkey". There
was some doubt, too, as to the sobriquet most fitting for
Smollett, the author's arch-enemy. Sterne had him at first
Smeldungus, but left him Smelfungus. In like manner was
partially deodorised the anecdote told of Madame de Ram-
bouliet, by merely substituting a French phrase for the plain,

448 LAURENCE STERNE

blunt English, originally writ large. Again, while counting
the pulse of the grisette, Yoriek lost his reckoning, it will be
remembered, at the fortieth pulsation, owing to the unex-
pected entrance of the husband, who passed through the shop
from the back parlour to the street. As a late addition came
the grisette 's remark — " 'Twas nobody but her husband", —
which put Yoriek at his ease in running up a fresh score on
the pretty wrist still extended towards him. On bidding
adieu, Yoriek gave the hand of the beautiful grisette, as it
was first written, "something betwixt a shake and a squeeze".
Had the vulgarity been permitted to stand, the scene would
have been spoiled, so whimsj&aUajjelicate is it in every other
detail.

These are merely examples of Sterne's alterations, so
numerous that no adequate notion could be given of them
without photographing large parts of the manuscript. True,
one turns many a clean folio, but substitutions such as have
been described are the rule; words and phrases are also
frequently transposed, and sentences are recast, curtailed, or
added to, — all for exactness, clearness, and rhythm. Every
change, however, relates to details, never to the general out-
line of a portrait or to the emotional transition from one to
another, any difficulties with which, if they were encoun-
tered, are not revealed by a manuscript wherein we see the
author only refining, sometimes to an amusing degree. For
example, Yoriek was not sure whether the packet which bore
him across the Channel should reach port at one, two, or
three o'clock in the afternoon. He first wrote two, then one,
and finally drawing his pen through each, settled upon three
o'clock as affording sufficient dramatic time for the Calais
episode before the approach of evening. Neither was he
sure whether he gave six or eight sous to "the sons and
daughters of poverty" who surrounded him as he was leav-
ing the inn at Montreuil; nor whether, on his return to
Calais, he walked a league or two leagues to pluck "a nettle
or two" growing over the grave of the late Father Lorenzo.

More important than attentions to time, place, and
number, is the keen sense that Sterne everywhere displayed
for the differences of meaning between synonyms, though

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 449

the right word was often slow in making its appearance.
Of the following list, he finally chose the second of each pair,
crossing out the first and writing the second above it or on
the margin: insolence and triumph, literata and precieuse,
quest and pursuit, withdrew and disengaged, hurt and mor-
tified, motives and movements, consolation and comfort,
donnoit and presentoit, un joli gargon and a clever young
fellow, and so on in a descent through scores of others to
ocean and sea, entered and came into, where rhythm or the
desire to escape repetition won the day. Throughout the
process Sterne managed his French easily. At times it was
not quite correct; accents were often forgotten; and occa-
sionally were dropped off final vowels and consonants of
words like Londre for Londres and desobligeant for desobli-
geante; but it was all clear enough to the eye. Beyond
these and similar slips, the French translator of the Senti-
mental Journey found it necessary to make very few cor-
rections in the many French phrases scattered through the
book. For Sterne's fille de chambre was substituted the
more usual femme de chambre, though both were in use;
and voild un persiflage of necessity became voila du per-
siflage; while the billet doux which Yorick sent to Madame
de L * * * was left intact except for corporal, which should
have been caporal.

Here in the Sentimental Journey occurs Sterne's beauti-
ful rendering of the French proverb : A brebis tondue Dieu
mesure le vent. "God tempers the wind", said the unfor-
tunate maid of Moulins, "to the shorn lamb." Precisely
how Sterne attained to the perfect phrasing along with the
perfect rhythm, no one can ever know, for the manuscript
does not extend thus far ; but if inference be justifiable from
analogies supported by the manuscript, moral epigrams did
not come to him in full expression all at once and without
effort. To cite an instance, Torick was so disturbed while
at the Opera Comique by the boorish conduct of a German
towards a dwarf standing in front of him in the parterre,
that he was ready to leap out of his box and run to the aid
of the poor fellow. Over Yorick 's emotions, Sterne first
remarked: "An injury sharpen 'd by an insult is insuf-

29

450 LAURENCE STEENE

ferable"; but not satisfied with the commonplace, he ran his
pen through the last part of the sentence, and then reworked
the whole to "An injury sharpen 'd by an insult, be it to
whom it will, makes every man of sentiment a party." And
so it likely was with the famous proverb, which seems easy
enough to frame now that the feat has been accomplished.
It was only throwing, one may say, the French sentence
into the English order and translating mesure by tempers,
and there you have Sterne. Yes: but George Herbert tried
his hand at the French proverb in a slightly different form
before prfe had dropped out between brebis and tondue, and
gave us the awkward "To a close shorne sheep God gives
wind by measure."* Sterne tried his hand and gave us
"God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb", thereby puzzling
many a clergyman who has taken the proverb for a text and
afterwards searched in vain for it through the wisdom of
Solomon.

• Not since the first instalment of Tristram Shandy had
I Sterne taken so great pains with a book, the publication of
which Becket was forced to delay until Wednesday or Thurs-
day, the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of February, 1768, t
a full month beyond the usual time for Sterne to make his
annual literary entrance into society. The work, bearing the
title A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy,
appeared in two styles — in two small octavo volumes with
pages measuring about six inches by three and three quar-
ters, and in two larger octavo volumes on imperial paper
with wide-margined pages measuring about seven inches by
four. In the first style, the price of the set, pages sewed but
unbound, was five shillings; in the second style, the price
was apparently half a guinea. Except for one episode
clearly out of place and for a few incidental references, the
travels contained nothing about Italy; indeed they were
extended beyond Paris only by working over in a more senti-
mental mood the story of Maria and the scene of the vintage
dance from Tristram Shandy, with the addition of an anec-
dote retold after John Craufurd of Errol. But as an an-

* Outlandish Proverbs, No. 861 (London, 1640).

t Registered at Stationers ' Hall, Feb. 27, 1768.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 451

nouncement that the public might expect an Italian tour in
continuation, Sterne had a loose page printed and slipped
into the copies for his subscribers. The loose page, rarely
to be seen nowadays, read as follows:

' ' Advertisement.
'"PHE Author begs leave to ac-
knowledge to his Subscribers,
that they have a further claim upon
him for Two Volumes more than these
delivered to them now, and which
nothing but ill health could have
prevented him, from having ready
along with these.

"The "Work will be eompleated
and delivered to the Subscribers early
the next Winter."*

There were two hundred and eighty-one subscribers, who
took altogether, some entering their names for more than one
copy, three hundred and thirty-four sets — one hundred and
ninety-nine on ordinary paper, and one hundred and thirty-
five on imperial paper. The result may seem disappointing
when compared with the immense array that ushered in the
Sermons of Mr. Yorick only two years before. Of all Sterne's
publications, his sermons, it must be admitted, were the most
immediately profitable; but their subsequent sale could not
be counted upon; nor is a subscribers' list a sure index of a
first sale, inasmuch as many a person who would hesitate to
patronise a book which might prove another Tristram
Shandy, would nevertheless purchase and read it. The new
list of subscribers, though falling short of expectations, was
a most notable advertisement, wherein were again marshalled
troops of friends among the nobility, gentry, and distin-
guished commoners, including nearly everybody prominently
connected with his Majesty's government, all the way down

* It has been asserted more than once (Notes and Queries, fifth
series, IX, 223) that this advertisement was issued with only the large
paper copies. This is an error, for the advertisement as given here ia
taken from a small paper copy.

ir

452 LAUBENCE STERNE

from the Duke of Grafton, the First Lord of the Treasury.
And as an assurance that the book contained nothing to bring
a blush to the most innocent cheek, one might read in the roll
of ecclesiastical titles, names like York and Peterborough.
All who could afford imperial paper had the honour of a
star after their names. Sir George Macartney was thus
starred for five sets, and "the young rich Mr. Crew" was
starred for twenty sets, the largest single subscription except
Panchaud's, who engaged the same number of small copies
for Paris.

No subscribers' list was necessary to ensure the success
of the Sentimental Journey, the first edition of which was
exhausted within a month.* All who wrote of the book in
newspapers, magazines, and letters were now ready to take
off their hats to Mr. Sterne's genius. All, I should say,
except one. Smelfungus, as the type of the splenetic traveller
from "a well-known original", of course could not be passed
by without a return thrust from Smollett's man on the
Critical Review,] who lamented, on observing chapters which
bore no number, that Yorick was again imposing upon the
public "whim for sentiment and caprice for humour". As
the reviewer waxed hot, poor Yorick was charged with "mak-
ing the sufferings of others the objects of his mirth" and of
rising "superior to every regard for taste, truth, observa-
tion, and reflection"; while La Fleur, "the least unmean-
ing" of all the sketches, the angry reviewer finally asserted
without any attempt at proof, was "pieced out with shreds
* * * barbarously cut out and unskilfully put together from
other novels". On the other hand, Walpole, who could never
get through three volumes of the "tiresome Tristram
Shandy", thought the new book "very pleasing, though too
much dilated", and recommended it for its "great good
nature and strokes of delicacy ".J One by one the portraits,
beginning with the monk and ending with the last scene at
the Piedmont inn, were taken up for comment by the Monthly
Review in a notice running through March and April. Quite

*The second edition appeared on Tuesday, March 29. London,

Chronicle, March 26-29, 1768.
tMay, 1768.
t Letters, edited by Toynbee, VII, 175.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOUENEY 453

naturally the reviewer was disposed to sport with his "good
cousin Yorick", in memory of old days when each had slashed
the other's jerkin ; but it was all kindly banter. Why should
"one of our first-rate pens", it was asked, write "a black
pair of silk breeches" instead of the more accurate "a pair
of black silk breeches"? or why should he descend to the
vulgarism of lay for lie, as when he says "Maria should lay
in my bosom", as if Maria were "the name of a favourite
pullet"? But these blemishes were all "pitiful minutiae",
it was concluded, of no account in a series of travels abound-
ing in "masterly" portraits, "affecting", "touching", "deli-
cate", and so on through the list of epithets of praise.

Tristram Shandy had long ago made Sterne's name
familiar through the greater part of literary Europe. Many
read the book in France and in Germany; but few even
among its friends at home, Sterne used to say, really under-
stood its drift. Certainly none of those who were translating
it had any adequate conception of its meaning. The Senti-
mental Journey, clear of any disorder in its art, could be
more easily read. Eyisrjbady_£ouJd feel its sentiment _and
pathos, though its lurking humour might escape them,
just "as it escaped^ Thacker ay ~'sTcenturj "later. True, the
Sentimental Journey does ^not cut so. .deeply into life as does
Tristram Shandy, the work by which -one must finally gauge
Sterne's genius; but for literary charm time has rightlj
given it the preference. The narrative — if it be narrative — \
moves through a series of dramatic portraits, which, like the
emotions underlying them, rise bright out of one another,
and, after glowing for a moment, fade away with consum-
mate art. Literature has nothing like these little pictures of
French life drawn with a hair brush"! They have been aptly
compared to the choicest pastels of Latour and Watteau,
always delicate and yet always brilliant in their colouring.
Unlike Tristram Shandy, there was nothing local about the
Sentimental Journey, nothing provincial, nothing even racial.
It at once assumed its place as a cosmopolitan classic by the
side of Robinson Crusoe.

Translations appeared in French and German within a
year, and thereafter in Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Russian.

454 LAURENCE STERNE

Bode, the German translator, when puzzled how to render
the word sentimental, appealed for aid to his friend Leasing,
who coined the adjective empfindsam after the analogy of
muhsam, thus giving, through Sterne, a new word to the
German language. It was in this translation, followed by
Tristram Shandy in 1774, that Goethe and Heine mainly
knew Sterne, of whom the former once said: "Yorick Sterne
is the best type of wit that ever exerted an influence in
literature. Whoever reads_ him feels himself lifted above
the petty__cares of the world. His" humour is inimitable, and
it.is not every^md of humour that, leaves the-soul ealm- and
serene."* Prenais, the French translator, likewise troubled
for an equivalent of sentimental, decided to take the word
over into French, in the hope that it would prove useful for
expressing a new idea. This mutilated version of the
original, missing as often as hitting the point of Sterne's
anecdotes, brought Torick's name and strange personality
back to the salons which had been captivated by his conver-
sation* The book, said Madame Suard, amused and pleased
many, while some few had for it the most profound contempt.
The vivacious Mademoiselle de Sommery, for instance, was
surprised that any one should find interest in a dead ass, a
lackey, or a mendicant who asks an alms. And she shook
with laughter at Yorick 's pleasure in holding the gloved
hand of a beautiful woman or in counting her pulse beats
with the tips of his fingers. To this and similar ridicule
Madame Suard replied finely in a letter to a mutual friend;
"The chapters descriptive of these incidents", she said there,
"certainly have little promise in them; but Sterne's merit,
it seems to me, lies in his having attached an interest to
details which in themselves have none whatsoever; in his
having caught a thousand faint impressions, a thousand
. fleeting emotions which pass through . the heart or the
\ imagination of a sensitive man, and in having rendered them
I all in piquant phrase and image. He enlarges, so to speak;'
Ithe human heart by portraying his own sensations, * * *
land thereby adds to the stores of our enjoyment. * * * If
* Thayer, Laurence Sterne in Germany, 105.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 455

you do not love Sterne, beware of telling me so, for I fear I
should then love you less. ' '*

To a later period belongs the impassioned tribute of Heine,
who was as sensitive as Sterne to "the great black eyes" and
"pale elegiac faces" which he saw in Italy. "Laurence
Sterne ' ', declared Heine in his enthusiasm, ' ' is the born equal
of "William Shakespeare; and he, too, was nurtured by the
Muses on Parnassus. But after the manner of women they
quickly spoiled him with their caresses. He was the darling
of the pale, tragic goddess. Once in an access of fierce tender-
ness, she kissed his young heart with such power, passion, and
madness, that his heart began to bleed and suddenly under-
stood all the sorrows of this world, and was filled with infinite
compassion. Poor young poet heart ! But the younger daugh-
ter of Mnemosyne, the rosy goddess of humour, quickly ran
up to him, and took the suffering boy in her arms, and sought
to cheer him with laughter and song; she gave him for play-
things the comic mask and the jester's bells, and kissed his
lips soothingly, kissing upon them all her levity and mirth,
all her wit and mockery, "t

* Lettre d'une Femme sur le Voyage sentimental de Sterne, in J. B.
A. Suard's Melanges de Littirature, III, 111-122 (Paris, 1803). Frenais
states his troubles over the word sentimental in his Avertissement to
the Voyage Sentimental (Amsterdam et Paris, 1769). Likewise Bode
in his Vorbericht to Yoricks Empfindsame Beise (Hamburg und Bremen,
1768).

t Die Bomantische Sehmle. Bk. Ill, ch. III.

CHAPTER XXI

ILLNESS AND DEATH
MAECH 1768

But Sterne never lived to enjoy to the full his final
triumph. The last time we see him afoot is on a Sunday,
late in February. He was to breakfast with Beauclerk, the
friend of Dr. Johnson, and pass an hour afterwards with
Lord Ossory. In the evening he was to dine along with
Selwyn with their friends in Gerrard Street. Mrs. James,
he had discovered, possessed a talent for drawing. "I pre-
sented her last year", he wrote to Selwyn ten days before,
"with colours, and an apparatus for painting, and gave her

several lessons before I left town. 1 wish her to follow

this art, to be a compleat mistress of it and it is singular

enough, but not more singular than true, that she does not
know how to. make a cow or a sheep, tho' she draws figures
and landscapes perfectly well." All this was a pretty intro-
duction to a request that Selwyn bring with him an Italian
print or two from his collection of "cattle on colour 'd
paper" for Mrs. James to copy. The two men planned to
go over to Gerrard Street half an hour before dinner to see
a picture of Mrs. James just "executed by West, most
admirably". "He has caught", said Sterne in concluding

his letter to Selwyn, "the character of our friend such

goodness is painted in that face, that when one looks at it,
let the soul be ever so much un-harmonized, it is impossible

it should remain so. 1 will send you a set of my books

they will take with the generality the women will

read this book in the parlour, and Tristram in the bed-
chamber. Good night, dear sir 1 am going to take my

whey, and then to bed."

The Sunday evening at Mrs. James's was the last of the
thousand dinners which had attended Yorick in his fame.

456

ILLNESS AND DEATH 457

The same week he came down with the winter's influenza,
which he had thus far escaped, notwithstanding his weakened
condition. During his illness, friendly visitors again called
at his lodgings, but he was unable to maintain his old buoy-
ancy of spirit, as may be seen from his last letter to his
daughter near the beginning of March. Mrs. Sterne, who
was still ailing, feared that she was going to die and leave
Lydia in the hands of a father who would send her out
to India as a companion to Mrs. Draper. On hearing from
Lydia of his wife's delusion, Sterne wrote back that he never
had such a design, that in case his daughter should lose her
mother, Mrs. James would become her protector. The dis-
respectful reference to Mrs. Draper in the letter now to be
quoted, was doubtless edited in by Lydia according to her
custom as we know it from extant originals. Sterne's last
pathetic letter to his daughter, in the form she printed it, ran
as follows:

"My dearest Lydia, My Sentimental Journey, you

say, is admired in York by everyone and 'tis not vanity

in me to tell you that it is no less admired here but what

is the gratification of my feelings on this occasion? the

want of health bows me down, and vanity harbours not in

thy father's breast this vile influenza be not alarm 'd,

I think I shall get the better of it and shall be with you

both the first of May, and if I escape, 'twill not be for a long
period, my child — unless a quiet retreat and peace of mind

can restore me. The subject of thy letter has astonish 'd

me. She could but know little of my feelings, to tell thee,

that under the supposition I should survive thy mother, I
should bequeath thee as a legacy to Mrs. Draper. No, my
Lydia! 'tis a lady, whose virtues I wish thee to imitate, that

I shall entrust my girl to 1 mean that friend whom I

have so often talk'd and wrote about from her you will

learn to be an affectionate wife, a tender mother, and a sin-
cere friend and you cannot be intimate with her, without

her pouring some part of the milk of human kindness into
your breast, which will serve to check the heat of your own

temper, which you partake in a small degree of. Nor will

that amiable woman put my Lydia under the painful neces-

458 LAURENCE STERNE

sity to fly to India for protection, whilst it is in her power

to grant her a more powerful one in England. But I

think, my Lydia, that thy mother will survive me do not

deject her spirits with thy apprehensions on my account.

I have sent you a necklace, buckles, and the same to your

mother. My girl cannot form a wish that is in the power of

her father, that he will not gratify her in — and I cannot

in justice be less kind to thy mother. 1 am never alone

The kindness of my friends is ever the same 1 wish

tho' I had thee to nurse me — but I am deny'd that.

"Write to me twice a week, at least. God bless thee, my

child, and believe me ever, ever thy affectionate father,
L. S."

Influenza prepared the way for pleurisy, which set in
during the second week of March; and despite all that could
be done for him, the patient grew worse from day to day.
On Tuesday the fifteenth, feeling the approach of death, he
took his farewell of the world in a noble and tender letter to
Mrs. James, asking her to look to the welfare of Lydia and
pleading for pardon for the many follies which had pained
his best friends:

"Your poor friend is scarce able to write he has been

at death's door this week with a pleurisy 1 was bled three

times on Thursday, and blister 'd on Friday The physi-
cian says I am better God knows, for I feel myself sadly

wrong, and shall, if I recover, be a long while of gaining

strength. Before I have gone thro' half this letter, I must

stop to rest my weak hand above a dozen times. Mr. James

was so good to call upon me yesterday. I felt emotions not
to be described at the sight of him, and he overjoy 'd me by

talking a great deal of you. Do, dear Mrs. James, entreat

him to come to-morrow, or next day, for perhaps I have not

many days, or hours, to live 1 want to ask a favour of

him, if I find myself worse — that I shall beg of you, if in

this wrestling I come off conqueror — my spirits are fled

'tis a bad omen — do not weep my dear Lady your tears

are too precious to shed for me — bottle them up, and may

the cork never be drawn. Dearest, kindest, gentlest, and

best of women ! may health, peace, and happiness prove your

ILLNESS AND DEATH 459

handmaids. If I die, cherish the remembrance of me, and

forget the follies which you so often condemn 'd — which my

heart, not my head, betray 'd me into. Should my child, my

Lydia want a mother, may I hope you will (if she is left

parentless) take her to your bosom? You are the only

woman on earth I can depend upon for such a benevolent

action. 1 wrote to her a fortnight ago, and told her what

I trust she will find in you. Mr. James will be a father

to her — he will protect her from every insult, for he wears

a sword which he has served his country with, and which he

would know how to draw out of the scabbard in defence of

innocence Commend me to him — as I now commend you

to that Being who takes under his care the good and kind

part of the world. Adieu all grateful thanks to you

and Mr. James. Your poor affectionate friend, L. Sterne."

Sterne lingered on in the full possession of his faculties

for three days more. Death came at four o'clock in the

afternoon of Friday, March 18, 1768*

Around the closing scenes in his Bond Street lodgings has

grown up a legend, starting from a fact or two, to show that

a life of pleasure, as in the case of the Rake's Progress, must

end in lonely bitterness. "The celebrated writer Sterne",

said Malone in repeating what he had heard in his youth,

"after being the idol of this town, died in a mean lodging

without a single friend who felt interest in his fate except

Becket, his bookseller." A little while before his death,

according to other parts of the story, Sterne complained like

Falstaff of cold in his feet; whereupon one attendant chafed

them while another plucked out his gold sleeve-buttons. The

next day his landlady, to be sure of her rent, sold his body,

Allan Cunningham heard, to dissectors, t It is quite easy to

* St. James's Chronicle, March 17-19.

t For stories concerning Sterne 's death, see Prior, Life of Malone,
373-74 (London, 1860) ; Leslie and Taylor, Life and Times of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, I, 293 (London, 1865) ; Cunningham, biographical
sketch of Reynolds in Lives of Eminent Painters edited by W. Sharpe
(London, 1886) ; John Ferriar, Illustrations of Sterne, II, 42 (London,
1812) ; Notes and Queries, fifth series, VIII, 249. Cunningham has an
amusing story. "The death of Sterne," he relates, "is said to have
been hastened by the sarcastic raillery of a lady whom he encountered
at the painter's [Reynolds] table. He offended her by the grossness of
his conversation, and, being in a declining state of health, suffered * * *
bo severely from her wit — that he went home and died."

460 LAURENCE STERNE

dispose of most of the legend. The "mean lodging" was a
suite of apartments in the most fashionable quarter of the
city, where Sterne was accustomed to receive every morning
men of the first rank. As his last illness was coming upon
him, he wrote to Lydia in the letter already quoted: "I am

never alone the kindness .of my friends is ever the same."

Sir Joshua Eeynolds had an appointment with him on the
twenty-second of February and again on the first of March.*
This kindly anxiety, it is safe to infer, continued till the end.
Commodore James, we know, called on Monday the four-
teenth, and most likely on the succeeding Thursday. If
visitors dropped away during the week, it was only because
Sterne was too ill to see them. On the first signs of pleurisy,
a physician, doubtless his "friend" of last year, was sum-
moned to bleed and blister in accordance with the usual
practice, and a nurse was placed in watch over the patient.
That Molly the house-maid, a cherished servant, who packed
and unpacked Sterne's luggage and served his meals through
two seasons, robbed him of sleeve-buttons or other trinkets
while death was creeping upon him, may be believed by
readers who know nothing of the kindly attachment that
ever existed between Sterne and those who served him.
"The poor girl", Sterne wrote in his journal the year before,
"is bewitch 'd with us." His landlady appears to have been
brusque of speech, but there is no evidence that she was a
ghoul. If Sterne was in arrears for his rent, we may be
certain that Becket discharged the obligation out of the
proceeds of the Sentimental Journey, which was fast ad-
vancing to a second edition. The sick man must have known
when he came up to London that the chances were against
his return to Coxwold. In his death was nearly fulfilled the
wish which he had expressed in Tristram Shandy, that he
might not die in his own house, but rather in "some decent
inn" away from the concern of friends, where "the few cold
offices" he should want might be "purchased with a 'few
guineas and paid me with an undisturbed and punctual
attention".

Without the aid of fictitious incident to point a moral,
•Reynolds, PocTcet-BooJc for 1768 (MS. at Royal Academy pf Arts).

ILLNESS AND DEATH 461

the contrast between the full life Sterne had lived and his
last moments is sufficiently striking to the imagination.
Had he been in health that Friday afternoon, he would have
been a guest at the table of John Craufurd of Errol. Re-
turning from Paris in January, this old friend had estab-
lished himself for the season, with a French cook and a
retinue of other French servants, near Sterne in Clifford
Street, in the house of Sir James Gray, who was going as
ambassador to Spain. On that Friday afternoon his friends
were gathering for a four o'clock dinner. There were
present the Duke of Roxburgh, just appointed a lord of his
Majesty's bedchamber, the Earl of March, afterwards
Duke of Queensberry, the Earl of Upper-Ossory, the Duke
of Grafton, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Hume, and Mr. James. The
conversation turned to the illness of Mr. Sterne, "a very
great favourite", says the relater, "of the gentlemen's";
and on hearing how serious his illness was, Craufurd im-
mediately sent out John Macdonald, a cadet of a ruined High-
land family, then in his service, to enquire how Mr. Sterne
was to-day. "I went to Mr. Sterne's lodgings", is the
cadet's record from memory; "the mistress opened the door;
I enquired how he did ? She told me to go up to the nurse.
I went into the room, and he was just a dying. I waited ten
minutes; but in five he said, 'Now it is come'. He put up
his hand, as if to stop a blow, and died in a minute. The
gentlemen were all very sorry, and lamented him very
much."*

The news of Sterne's death passed quickly on from his
friends to the public. Lady Mary Coke, as noted in her
journal, heard of it that evening while playing loo at Caroline
Howe's. Of the party were Horace Walpole, the Earl of
Ossory, and Lord Eglinton. Lord Ossory, on coming in
from Craufurd 's dinner, announced the death of "the
famous Dr. Sterne". "He seemed", remarked Lady Mary,
"to lament him very much. Lord Eglinton said (but not
in a ludicrous manner) that he had taken his 'Sentimental
Journey', "t Newspapers contained the usual death notice,

*John Macdonald, Travels, 146-47 (London, 1790).

f Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, II, 215-16 (Edinburgh,
1889).

462 LATJEENCE STEBNE

some of them adding Hamlet's lament over the skull of
"poor Yorick, * * * a fellow of infinite jest". Within a
week or two, verses began to circulate in newspapers and
magazines on Sterne's humour and pathos. Very sprightly
was a poem in which a poetaster expressed doubt as to where
Yorick might now be sojourning, whether in the Blysian
Fields or in the darker realms of Pluto. Taking notice of
this and other illiberal pens which were meanly endeavour-
ing - to injure the reputation of Mr. Sterne, the London
Magazine for March felt sure that "if the accusing spirit
flies up to heaven's chancery with his indiscretions, it will
blush to give them in", or that "the recording angel in writ-
ing them down will drop a tear upon each and wash it away
forever". The news of Sterne's death, travelling abroad
through the next month, reached Lessing at Hamburg.
Though Lessing never met Sterne, he had been reading Tris-
tram Shandy since 1763, and recommending it for enlight-
enment. On being told by Bode, the translator, that Yorick
was dead, the great critic and dramatist made a famous
remark, afterwards variously repeated to other friends.
"I would have given ten years of my own life," said Lessing,
"if I had been able to lengthen Sterne's by one year".* Like
many other Germans, Lessing wished Sterne to live on, that
he might write more lives and opinions, more sermons and
more journeys, or no matter what.

Were the moralists of aftertimes to be trusted, Sterne's
funeral was "as friendless as his death-bed", though the very
little really known concerning it points to nothing out of the
usual course. Sterne was buried on Tuesday, the twenty-
second of March,! from his lodgings in Bond Street, then
within the parish of St. George's Church, Hanover Square.
Whether few or many mourners came for a last look at
Yorick in his death there is no record. All one can say
about it is that the service was conducted, according to John
Croft, by the chaplain of the late Prince of Wales, who took
charge of Sterne's personal effects and burned, as was then

* Bode, Vorbericht to his translation of the Sentimental Journey;
and Thayer, Laurence Sterne m Germany, 40 (New York, 1905).

t Parish Registry, St. George's, Hanover Square.

ILLNESS AND DEATH 463

customary, his "loose papers".* The interment was, we
may well believe, as was said twelve years afterwards, "most
private" ;f for the burial-ground belonging to the fashionable
church in Hanover Square lay far out Oxford Street on the
Bayswater Eoad, over against the broad expanse of Hyde
Park. It was a new ground which had been enclosed and
consecrated only four years before, with a small mortuary
chapel at the entrance. Among the few "gentlemen" who,
tradition says, attended Sterne's body through the chapel,
named the Ascension, on to his grave by the west wall, were
certainly Becket and Commodore James. The record closes
with the entry which the sexton made in his book, that six-
teen shillings and sixpence — a rather large sum — was paid
for prayers at the chapel and for the candle kept burning
previous to interment.

The appropriate resting place for Sterne's body would
have been the beautiful church at Coxwold by Shandy Hall.
But none of his Yorkshire friends, who might have borne
the trouble and expense of removal, were in London at the
time of his death. Hall-Stevenson had returned to Skelton,
and Lord Fauconberg remained at his country-seat through
the winter. The group of London gentlemen who took charge
of his funeral knew little or nothing of his associations in the
north. Since Sterne died in the parish of St. George's, the
burial-ground attached to that church must have appeared
to them the most natural place for his interment. And yet
they should have considered the danger attending burial in
the suburbs at a time when dissecting-tables were furnished,
without any scruple on the part of anatomists, from remote
grave-yards. They should have known, if they read the
newspapers, that for some time before Sterne's death the
resurrection men had been at work on the Bayswater Road
and in the neighbouring parish of Marylebone. In the hope
of putting an end to the sacrilege, the wardens of St.
George's placed over their ground a watch with a large
mastiff dog; but in spite of this precaution, a corpse was

* WUtefoord Papers, 230.

t Memoirs prefixed to the collected edition of Sterne's works (Lon-
don, 1780).

464 LAURENCE STERNE

stolen on a Sunday in the preceding November, while the
watch was asleep ; and the very dog was carried off with the
burden.* It is charitable to suppose that this warning in
the newspapers had escaped the notice of those friends who
conveyed Sterne to his last legal settlement.

However that may be, they were soon to hear, with "great
concern and astonishment", that Sterne had gone to the
dissecting-table. As the story was told to Hall-Stevenson
when he came up to London the next winter, "the body of
Mr. Sterne, who was buried near Mary [le] bone, was taken
up some time after his interment, and is supposed to have
been carried to Oxford, and anatomised by an eminent
surgeon of that city".t Besides the mistake in the place of
burial, Hall-Stevenson seems also to have been misinformed
as to the exact disposition of the body. For Oxford the
more carefully elaborated story has Cambridge. To give all
the gruesome details of the narrative then current, Sterne's
body was stolen from his grave by resurrectionists on the
night of Wednesday or Thursday following the interment,
and carried the next day in a case to Cambridge, where it
was sold to "the anatomical professor" of the university,
since identified as Dr. Charles Collignon, "an ingenious,
honest man", much skilled in his art. To mitigate the horror
of the crime, it is said that none involved in the robbery
knew that the body was Sterne's. The discovery came about
by mere accident. The professor of anatomy invited two
friends to view the dissection of a nameless corpse which had
just arrived from London. The work was nearly over when
one of them out of curiosity uncovered the face of the dead
man and recognised the features of Sterne, whom he had
known and associated with not long ago. The poor visitor
fainted at the sight, and Professor Collignon, on learning
what a famous man lay under his scalpel, took care to retain
the skeleton, which "the Eev. Thomas Greene" — presumably
the Dean of Salisbury — claimed to have seen at Cambridge
a few years, after. Since the opening of the nineteenth cen-

* St. James's Chronicle, Nov. 24-26, 1767.

t Hall-Stevenson, Preface to Yonek's Sentimental Journey Continued
(second edition, London, 1769).

ILLNESS AND DEATH 465

toy, various attempts have been made to identify Sterne's
skull in the collection at Cambridge, but they have all been
fruitless. The tradition has nevertheless persisted among
Dr. Collignon's successors down to Dr. Alexander Macalister,
who now holds the professorship, that Sterne's skull once
reposed in the Anatomical Museum of the university.

The ghastly tale in the form recently told anew by Pro-
fessor Macalister may be accepted as essentially true.* Not
only is it probable when we consider the place and circum-
stances of Sterne's burial; but it also rests upon good
authority, partly upon the statement of Hall-Stevenson, who
was Sterne's most intimate friend, and partly upon that of
Malone, who received the account of Sterne's dismal fate
directly from one of the gentlemen who was present at the
dissection. Of less weight, though worthy of regard, is an
old manuscript note at the end of a copy of the first edition
of the Sentimental Journey, wherein the writer says that the
story was confirmed by Dr. Collignon. Certainly it was very
generally believed in after years that Sterne's sojourn was
brief on the Bayswater Road. In consequence of this and
other desecrations of the dead, St. George's burial-ground
fell into great ill-repute. Overgrown with nettles and weeds,
it was for a long time among the most neglected grave-yards
in all London; shunned by everybody out of instinctive feel-
ings of horror, it was a spot where no one, if he could help it,
ever permitted his friends to be buried. And so it became a
place where the poor might be huddled into their graves.
Since those days all has changed: the metropolis has spread
her protecting wings far beyond Hyde Park; and the old
abandoned cemetery by the great Marble Arch, long since
closed against the dead, appears as a quiet spot in the midst
of a throbbing life.f But as a fitting symbol of the Gothie
fears which it formerly inspired, lie some distance from where
Sterne was buried the bones of Ann Radcliffe, the once
popular romancer of crime and death.

As evidence of final and complete neglect, it has been

* Macalister, History of the Study of Anatomy in Cambridge (Cam-
bridge, 1891). See also Willis's Current Notes, April, 1854, for a
summary of the evidence.

t Cecil Moore, Brief History of St. George's Chapel (London, 1883).
30

466 LAURENCE STERNE

many times repeated that neither Sterne's friends nor his
family cared enough for his memory to mark his grave. The
assertion in this form is quite untrue, for none knew Sterne
well but to hold him at least in pleasant remembrance; and
a stone was in fact projected, for which Garrick wrote the
brief epitaph, —

"Shall Pride a heap of sculptur'd marble raise,
Some worthless, unmourn'd titled fool to praise;
And shall we not by one poor grave-stone learn
Where Genius, Wit, and Humour, sleep with Sterne ?" —

which Lydia, in the warmth of her heart, thought a "sweet"
tribute to her father from one who "loved the man" as well
as "admired his works". The project was abandoned, not
because of indifference nor of a desire to leave Sterne undis-
tinguished among the dead, but most likely because, in the
belief of many, and perhaps on positive assurance from Cam-
bridge, his body no longer reposed in St. George's parish.
In succeeding years the want of a memorial to an author
whom scores of pens were lauding in verse and prose was not
understood by men unacquainted with rumours no longer in
active currency. So it happened that Sterne was finally in-
debted for a headstone, sometime near 1780, to two free-
masons, who had read Sterne's books, but had never seen the
man. Their inscription, summarising Sterne's literary
career and attributing to him all the virtues of freemasonry,
though he did not belong to the order, read as follows :

Alas! Poor Yorick

Near to this Place

Lyes the Body of

The Eeverend Laurence Sterne, A.M.

Dyed September 13th, 1768,

Aged 53 Years.

Ah! Molliter ossa quieseant!
If a sound Head, warm Heart, and Breast humane,
Unsullied Worth, and Soul without a Stain ;
If mental Powers could ever justly claim

ILLNESS AND DEATH 467

The well-won Tribute of immortal Fame,
Sterne was the Man, who with gigantic Stride,
Mowed down luxuriant Follies far and wide.
Yet what, though keenest Knowledge of Mankind
Unseal'd to him the Springs that move the Mind;
What did it cost him? ridicul'd, abus'd,
By Fools insulted, and by Prudes accus'd.
In his, mild Eeader, view thy future Fate,
Like him despise, what 'twere a Sin to hate.

This monumental Stone was erected to the memory of
the deceased, by two Bkother Masons; for although He did
not live to be a Member of their Society, yet all his incom-
parable Performances evidently prove him to have acted by
Rule and Square: they rejoice in this opportunity of per-
petuating his high and irreproachable character to after
ages. W & S

The monument was pronounced at the time "very un-
worthy" of Sterne's memory, and the strangers who erected
it have since been described as "tippling masons". It is
quite difficult to see in the inscription anything to suggest
tippling, nor does it appear on what grounds the brother-
hood of masons may be called tipplers, if that be the insinua-
tion. Why not take things as they are? The memorial was
a simple slab such as the two men could easily afford; and
the inscription, reflecting the bad taste of the authors and
their ignorance of Sterne, was yet a sincere encomium from
humble admirers of Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental
Journey. Sterne's grave remained for more than a century
much as the brother masons left it; but fifteen years ago the
owner of his uncle Richard's seat near Halifax corrected the
obvious mistakes in age and date of death on the head-
stone, and erected a footstone having the more appropriate'
inscription :

468 LAURENCE STEENE

In

Memory of

The Rev? Laurence Sterne, M.A.

Rector of Coxwould, Yorkshire,

Born November 24, 1713.

Died March 18, 1768.

The Celebrated Author

of

"Tristram Shandy"

and

"The Sentimental Journey"

Works unsurpassed in the English language,

For a Richness of Humour and a pathetic sympathy

Which will ever render the Name of their Author

Immortal.

"Requiescat in pace."

The Headstone to this grave

Was Cleaned and Restored, by the owner of the "Sterne"

Property,

At Woodhall, near Halifax, in the County of York,

Who also erected the foot and border stones

In the Year

1893.

As if Sterne's death had been expected in the north, his
Yorkshire parishes and the prebendal stall which he held in
St. Peter's, were immediately filled by men who were waiting
for them. On March 25, or within three or four days after
the news of Sterne's death could have reached York, the Rev.
Andrew Cheap was collated to Sutton-on-the-Porest, and Dr.
William Worthington to the canonry and prebend of North
Newbald. Two weeks afterwards Lord Pauconberg nominated
the Rev. Thomas Newton to Coxwold, and the Archbishop of
York signed the license on the nineteenth of April.* Into
these transactions one might read unusual haste, were it not
that ecclesiastical business of this kind was always quickly

* Institutions of the Diocese of York, and York Cowrant, April 5,
1768.

ILLNESS AND DEATH 469

despatched at York and elsewhere in the old days. None of
Sterne's successors, family, or friends, as has been often re-
marked, placed a mural tablet to his memory at Coxwold or at
Sutton. This neglect, at first sight rather strange, is sufficiently
accounted for by the fact that he died out of his parishes.
Where the body lies should be the monument, was then the rule.
Shandy Hall by the roadside beyond the church at Cox-
wold, apparently never again used as the parsonage, was oc-
cupied for a time by a local surgeon, who let it fall into
disrepair. After his death, its owner, Sir George Wombwell of
Newburgh Priory, a descendant of Lord Fauconberg, turned
the old rambling house into labourers' tenements, blocking up
in the process inner passages and turning two of the lead-pane
windows into outer doorways. Fortunately the desecrat-
ing hand barely touched Sterne's study with its great
yawning fireplace; and in amends for the past, a bronze
tablet has since been placed by the gateway, saying to all
travellers :

Shandy Hall

Here dwelt Laurence Sterne

Many Years incumbent

of Coxwold.

Here he wrote Tristram Shandy

And the Sentimental Journey.

Died in London in 1768

Aged 55 Years

Thus little by little the author of Tristram Shandy has
been accorded those slight emblems of fame which untoward
circumstances rather than anything else denied him im-
mediately after death. Once or twice Sterne expressed a
wish that, should he die at home, his body might be laid by
the side of his great-grandfather, the archbishop, in the
cathedral at York. Although hardly hoping for this honour,
he seems to have expected that a marble replica of the
Nollekens bust would sometime be placed to his memory near
the tomb of his most distinguished ancestor.

CHAPTER XXII

LYPIA AND HER MOTHER. POSTHUMOUS SER-
MONS AND LETTERS

No will was found among Sterne's papers. On the fourth
of June following his death, letters for the administration
of his goods were granted the widow in the Prerogative
Court of York, which was still presided over by Francis
Topham, the meddler whom Sterne had silenced in the His-
tory of a Good Warm Watch-Coat. Mrs. Sterne's sureties
on the customary bond entered at the same time were two
friends of the family, Arthur Ricard, father and son, attor-
neys at York. The document was signed and sealed in the
presence of Robert Jubb the notary, another of their friends.
As indicative of the valuation placed upon Sterne's effects,
the sureties jointly bound themselves to the sum of £500. No
inventory of goods was ever exhibited for comparison with
this valuation, but the estimate was nearly correct. Indeed,
Sterne's personal effects had already been sold, and all claims
upon his estate had been called in by Mr. Ricard the senior,
to whom Mrs. Sterne delegated the details of administration.
Thus, without strict legal authority, an auction was held out
at Shandy Hall, on April 14, for the sale of "all the house-
hold goods and furniture of the late Mr. Sterne, * * * with
a ejow, * * * a parcel of hay, a handsome post-chaise with a
pair of exceeding good horses, and a compleat set of coloured
table-china". To tempt purchasers, the china was placed on
exhibition at a shop in York, and the horses at Bluitt's Inn
in Lendal Street, whence the fastest post-chaises set out for
London. Sterne's books, including the lot which he had
purchased "dirt cheap" a few years before, were sold to
Todd and Sotheran at the sign of the Golden Bible in Stone-

470

John Hall-Stevenson

From a painting at Skelton Castle

LYDIA AND HER MOTHER 471

gate, in whose catalogue for 1768 they were advertised to the
public. From all these sales was realised about £400.*

Against these assets were debts, Lydia wrote to Wilkes,
amounting to £1100, which must have been the slow accumu-
lation of several years. According to Sterne's account-book,
which came under the eye of John Croft, the author received
"£1500 of Dodsley at different times for his publications";
and Becket should have paid him quite as much more. The
£3000 had all gone in visits to London, in foreign travel, and
in the maintenance of wife and daughter abroad. Had the
Sternes been good economists, their income from various
sources might have proved adequate for their new mode of
living, but they were all improvident. Ever since their first
sojourn in France, the head of the family had been borrow-
ing small sums from this or that acquaintance — ten, twenty,
or fifty pounds here and there — and binding therefor the
whole Shandy household until the appearance of a forth-
coming instalment of his book. The Sentimental Journey,
Sterne had hoped, would put him even with the world and
enable him, after the sale of his real estate, to make per-
manent provision for his family. In the midst of these
expectations Sterne died, and the day of reckoning with his
creditors was at hand for his widow. Wishing to avoid the
disgrace of insolvency, Mrs. Sterne "nobly engaged" to pay
off little by little all of her husband's debts out of the rent
of the lands at Sutton and her own private estate, yielding
£40 a year. At this juncture Hall-Stevenson came to the
rescue of the "unhappy widow" by raising a handsome sub-
scription for her and Lydia at the York races in the follow-
ing August, said to have amounted to eight hundred or a
thousand guineas, t

Through this generous aid of friends, all of Sterne's per-
sonal debts seem to have been promptly liquidated. There

* The auction at Shandy Hall was advertised in the York Courant,
April 12, 1768. Among Sterne's books which went to Todd and Sotheran
were Beroalde's Moyen de Parvenir, Bouchet's Series, and Bruscam-
bille's Pensees Facetieuses. — See Willis's Current Notes, April, 1854.

t For these and other details, see Lydia 's letters to Wilkes and Hall-
Stevenson in J. Almon, The Correspondence of the late John Wilkes,
V, 7-20 (London, 1805). See also WHtefoord Papers, 230-31; and
Memoirs prefixed to Sterne's Works (Dublin, 1779).

472 LAURENCE STERNE

was, however, one claim against his estate which the widow
stoutly resisted on the advice of her attorneys. The par-
sonage-house at Sutton, which burned to the ground several
years before, still lay in ashes, though Sterne "had been
frequently admonished and required to rebuild" it. As
vicar of the parish, Sterne was liable for any impairment
to the value of the living during his incumbency. But in
this case were two extenuating circumstances which might
be pleaded against strict enforcement of the law. The house
had been set on fire while Sterne was not in residence — by a
careless curate or by some one else within his gates, from
whom it was impossible to recover damages. Again, the
house in ashes was not much worse than the house in ruins,
such as Sterne found it when he entered upon the living at
an expense for repairs which staggered him. Certainly it
was not quite just to ask him to build anew to the impoverish-
ment of his estate. Arguing in this way, Sterne easily found
means for evading what some thought the performance of
an obvious duty to his parish. At his death came the crisis.
His successor, the Eev. Mr. Cheap, after vainly trying, per-
suasion with Mrs. Sterne, instituted a suit against her for
dilapidations ; whereupon, in order to escape the payment of
damages, she was compelled to pocket her pride and make
an oath of insolvency. Thus in danger of recovering noth-
ing, the Eev. Mr. Cheap accepted from Mrs. Sterne £60 in
satisfaction for the claim. All this was afterwards recorded
by the angry vicar in the parish registry of Sutton in com-
pany with his impressions of the Shandy household, and with
the statement that the cost of the suit and of rebuilding
reached the sum of £576. 13s. 5d.

After the settlement of Sterne's estate, Mrs. Sterne and
Lydia went into lodgings at York for the winter, with the
intention of passing over to a secluded life in France, as soon
as some slight provision might be made for the future beyond
their small rents and the forty pounds per annum long in
Mrs. Sterne's own right. Among Sterne's effects upon which
an appraiser would have placed no value, were his manu-
scripts, consisting of copies or drafts of letters, fragments or
passages cast aside in the final revision of Tristram Shandy,

LYDIA AND HER MOTHER 473

notes and suggestions for the continuation of the Sentimental
Journey, and an odd lot of eighteen sermons, which the
author had rejected in making up his previous volumes for
publication. Of such manuscripts as have survived, the
letters are particularly interesting. Clearly anticipating
their publication after his death, Sterne copied out many
letters_ which had passed between himself and friends into a
letter-book, prefaced with the following information for his
wife and daughter: "Fothergil I know has some good ones
Garrick some Berenger has one or two Gov. Lit-
tleton's Lady (Miss Macartney) numbers Countess of

Edgecomb Mrs. Moore of Bath Mrs. Fenton, London

cum multis aliis. These all, if collected, with the large

number of mine and friends in my possession would print
and sell to good account. Hall has by him a great number,

[which] with those in this book and in my Bureau and

those above would make four vols, the size of Shandy

they would sell well — and produce 800 pds. at the least."*
The letters and all of Sterne's papers were carefully exam-
ined by his survivors with a view to profit rather than to the
enhancement of his fame. Such as appeared to be of no
consequence Mrs. Sterne left at Shandy Hall, where, it has
been said, they were used by the new incumbent as a lining
for wall-paper in redecorating one of the rooms. The letters
and a few fragments were preserved for subsequent con-
sideration. The sermons it was decided to bring out the
next season under the patronage of Sterne's friends.

Many local subscribers sent in their names through the
winter ; and then in the spring Mrs. Sterne and Lydia started
for London to complete the list on the way to France. While
in town, they lodged with a "Mr. Williams, paper-mer-
chant",! in Gerrard Street near the Jameses, who showed
them every courtesy and kindness. Through the Jameses or
on their own initiative, they met scores of Sterne's London
acquaintances, to whom they told their melancholy story, and
gained thereby the coveted subscriptions. In this business,

* Some leaves of this old letter-book form a part of the Sterne Manu-
scripts owned by J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.

t The address is given in Wilkes's List of Addresses (British Mu-
seum, Additional MSS., 30892).

474 LAURENCE STERNE

Lydia, who figured as the type of beauty in distress, took the
leading part. Adopting the style and manner of her father,
she sat in her lodgings despatching requests about town for
aid in obtaining subscriptions, or for permission to visit her
father's more influential friends in order to make a personal
plea in the interest of her mother. "Mrs. and Miss Sterne's
compliments", began a formal note in Lydia 's hand to John
Wilkes, then in the King's Bench prison awaiting trial, "wait
on Mr. Wilkes. They intend doing themselves the pleasure
of calling upon him, if not disagreeable; and would be
obliged to him if he would appoint an hour when he will not
be engaged. They would not intrude ; yet should be happy
to see a person whom they honour, and whom Mr. Sterne
justly admired. They will, when they see Mr. Wilkes, en-
treat him to ask some of his friends to subscribe to three
volumes of Mr. Sterne's Sermons, which they are now pub-
lishing." After detailing the facts in regard to Sterne's
large debts, the letter continued: "We have sold the copy-
right for a trifle; our greatest hopes are, that we may have
a good many subscribers. Several of our friends have used
their interest in our behalf. The simple story of our situa-
tion will, I doubt not, engage Mr. Wilkes to do what he can."
On these and similar appeals the number of subscribers was
brought up to seven hundred and twenty-nine, a larger,
though not more distinguished, list than any that had
appeared before Sterne's books during his lifetime.

In negotiating with the publishers, Lydia came perilously
near sharp practice. As first planned, the sermons were to
go to Becket, who made a liberal offer for the copyright;
but as the day of publication approached, he demanded a
year's credit and otherwise assumed arbitrary airs, to the
great annoyance of the widow and daughter, who stood in
need of money to take them into France. Thereupon Lydia,
resolving to sell the copyright to the highest bidder, sent
Becket 's final terms to William Strahan, a rival publisher
in the Strand, along with the following letter as yet
unpublished :

"I enclose you Mr. Beckett's proposal — when he last
offer 'd £400 for the copyright he insisted on no such terms

LYDIA AND HER MOTHER 475

as these this affair of not offering them to anyone else

must be managed with the greatest caution — for you see he
says that he will not take them if offer 'd elsewhere. He will

be judge of the quantity and quality and insists on a

year's credit. All these points my mother and myself most

earnestly desire you to consider. Unless you could be

pretty sure of getting us more than £400, the offering them

might perhaps come to Becket's knowledge yet believe

me, Sir, we had rather anyone had them than Becket he

is a dirty fellow."

In the end was effected some sort of compromise, whereby
Mrs. Sterne and Lydia doubtless received £400 in cash for
the first edition and for the copyright, which was purchased
by a small syndicate of publishers formed by Strahan, Cadell,
and Becket. Under their joint auspices appeared, near the
first of June, 1769, "Sermons by the late Rev. Mr. Sterne",
comprising volumes five, six, and seven of the complete issue.
Subscribers' books, it was announced in the newspapers,
would be delivered by Becket. The price of the set was
7s. 6d.

Fearing this posthumous collection of miscellaneous ser-
mons, Sterne humorously described them three years before
as "the sweepings of the Author's study after his death".
At that time, to judge from the extant manuscript* of the
sermon on the "Temporal Advantages of Religion", written
all over with corrections, he considered the publication of
sermons contained in these volumes, revising, curtailing, and
adding to them; but rightly decided after a little thought
that they had better be kept from the light, for they were
mostly ordinary parish homilies, good enough for the nonce,
but altogether too commonplace for an audience that should
include the nobility and gentry of the kingdom. And beyond
this, the sermons abounded in repetitions, not only of thought
but of phrase and sentence, sometimes to the extent of a
paragraph or more. Half of the sermon entitled the "Thir-
tieth of January", to cite an extreme instance, on the "great
trespass" of our forefathers in putting to death Charles the
First, was taken bodily over into "The Ingratitude of
* Now in the private library of Mr. W. K. Bixby, of St. Louis.

476 LATJKENCE STERNE

Israel". Among these sermons, occurs, too, the most flagrant
act of plagiarism that has ever been charged against Sterne.
In 1697, "Walter Leightonhouse, late Fellow of Lincoln Col-
lege, Oxford, and then Prebendary of Lincoln, published
twelve sermons which he had preached in his cathedral. It
was a volume of rather mediocre sermons by a rather obscure
clergyman, which Sterne freely appropriated on urgent occa-
sions when a sermon must be prepared on short notice. How
closely Sterne followed Leightonhouse may be seen by com-
paring the two preachers on the text "Put thou thy trust in
the Lord".

The Prebendary of Lincoln began :

"He that soberly sits down, and considers the State and
Condition of Man; how that he is born unto trouble, as the
sparks fly upwards, shall find his Life perpetually surrounded
with so many sorrowful Changes- and Vicissitudes, that 'twill
be matter of the greatest Wonder, how the Spirit of Man
could bear the Infirmities of Nature, and carry him through
the Disappointments of this Valley of Tears. And indeed,
had not the frame of our Constitution, and the Contexture
of our Minds been curiously contrived by the Hand of an
All-Wise Being; did not the Faculties of our upper Region
greatly support our tottering building of Clay, 'tis impossible
but the day of our Birth, would appear to be our greatest
Misfortune, and the silent Grave be earnestly sought, and
desired by each thinking son of Adam."

The opening passage by the Prebendary of Lincoln was
thus ably paraphrased and expanded by the Prebendary of
York:

"Whoever seriously reflects upon the state and condition
of man, and looks upon that dark side of it, which represents

his life as open to so many causes of trouble ; when he

sees how often he eats the bread of affliction, and that he is

born to it as naturally as the sparks fly upwards ; that no

rank or degrees of men are exempted from this law of our

beings; but that all, from the high cedar of Libanus to

the humble shrub upon the wall, are shook in their turns by

numberless calamities and distresses: when one sits down

and looks upon this gloomy side of things, with all the sor-

LYDIA AND HEE MOTHER 477

rowful changes and chances which surround us, — at first
sight, — would not one wonder, — how the spirit of man could
bear the infirmities of his nature, and what it is that sup-
ports him, as it does, under the many evil accidents which he

meets with in his passage through the valley of tears?

Without some certain aid within us to bear us up, — so ten-
der a frame as ours would be but ill fitted to encounter what
generally befalls it in this rugged journey: and accord-
ingly we find, — that we are so curiously wrought by' an all-
wise hand, with a view to this, — that, in the very composition
and texture of our nature, there is a remedy and provision

left against most of the evils we suffer; we being so

ordered, — that the principle of self-love, given us for pre-
servation, comes in here to our aid, — by opening a door of
hope, and, in the worst emergencies, flattering us with a belief
that we shall extricate ourselves, and live to see better
days. "

The Prebendary of Lincoln, in closing, said:

"And although the Fig-tree should not blossom, neither
should fruit be in the Vine; although the Labour of the Olive
should fail, and the Fields should yield no Meat; although
the Flock should be cut off from the Fold, and there should
be no Herd in the Stall; yet let us rejoice in the Lord, let us
joy in the God of our Salvation."

And the Prebendary of York, by this time aweary of his
task, copied out his brother nearly word for word:

"Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall
fruit be in the vines; — : — although the labour of the olive

shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; although

the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no
herd in the stalls ; yet we will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in
the God of our salvation. "*

These are but examples of the manner in which Sterne
revamped old sermons, whether written by himself or by
others, in the business of his parish. A sermon entitled
"Evil", to pursue the subject further, closes with a passage

* For this comparison, see Sterne 's thirty-fourth sermon, and Leigh-
tonhouse's twelfth sermon in Twelve Sermons preached at the Cathedral
Church of Lincoln (London, 1697). See also Edbatekuk, 3, 17-18.

478 LAUEENCE STEENE

from a sermon on the "Advantages of Christianity"; and
across the manuscript of sermon forty-four, justifying the
ways of Providence to man, Sterne wrote that it was mostly
borrowed from Wollaston. Still other sermons, like "Pen-
ances" and "On Enthusiasm", whether original or not in
their phrasing, merely reflect the violent hatred against the
Church of Home prevalent in '45, a phase of passion through
which Sterne had long since passed. And it seems almost
impossible that a sermon could ever have come from Yorick's
pen so tame and lifeless as the one on the "Sanctity of the
Apostles".

In compensation for these inanities, Sterne is still visible
here and there at his very best. It is Sterne the humourist
who, on rising into the pulpit, reads two texts for the sermon
on "Evil" — one from St. Paul and one from Solomon — and
then, looking over his congregation, says: "Take either as
you like it, you will get nothing by the bargain." Again it
is Sterne the eloquent preacher who draws a portrait of the
young George the Third under the guise of Asa, the peaceful
king, who received his sceptre from the warlike Abijah.
"His experience told him", says the preacher weightily
of the young king, "that the most successful wars, instead
of invigorating, more generally drained away the vitals of
government, — and, at the best, ended but in a brighter and
more ostentatious kind of poverty and desolation: there-
fore he laid aside his sword, and studied the arts of ruling

Judah with peace. Conscience would not suffer Asa to

sacrifice his subjects to private views of ambition, and wis-
dom forbade he should suffer them to offer up themselves to

the pretence of public ones; since enlargement of empire,

by the destruction of its people (the natural and only valua-
ble source of strength and riches), was a dishonest and

miserable exchange. And however well the glory of a

conquest might appear in the eyes of a common beholder, yet,
when bought at that costly rate, a father to his country would
behold the triumphs which attended it, and weep, as it passed
by him."

Finally, monotonies over "the degeneracy of the times"
or "the wickedness of the world" are relieved by Sterne's

LTDIA AND HEE MOTHER 479

descriptions of high life as he had seen it, wherein religion
has become "a standing jest to enliven discourse when con-
versation sickens", and wherein are admitted men however
infamous their character, and women however abandoned,
"to be courted, caressed, and flattered", always without
question, if they can pay for it. These fashionable people,
among whom a man of sobriety and temperance steers his
course with difficulty, were exhorted in another sermon to
search the Scriptures, if not for moral improvement, at least
for aesthetic enjoyment. "There are two sorts of elo-
quence", the preacher told them; "the one indeed scarce
deserves the name of it, which consists chiefly in laboured and
polished periods, an over-curious and artificial arrangement
of figures, tinsell'd over with a gaudy embellishment of
words, which glitter, but convey little or no light to the
understanding. * * * It is a vain and boyish eloquence; and
as it has always been esteemed below the great geniuses of
all ages, so much more so, with respect to those writers who
were actuated by the spirit of infinite wisdom, and therefore
wrote with that force and majesty with which never man

writ. The other sort of eloquence is quite the reverse to

this, and which may be said to be the true characteristic of
the holy Scriptures ; where the excellence does not arise from
a laboured and far-fetched elocution, but from a surprising
mixture of simplicity and majesty, which is a double char-
acter, so difficult to be united, that it is seldom to be met with
in compositions merely human." These two types of elo-
quence Sterne then proceeded to illustrate in a running
parallel between great passages in Greek and Hebrew litera-
ture. If in the end he did not exactly prove the superiority
of the Bible over the classical literatures, he most ably
presented and defended a thesis novel to his audience. It
would indeed be hard to find, as Cardinal Newman once
pointed out, anything better than Sterne's on the "simplicity
and majesty" of the Old Testament.*

Besides publishing the sermons, Mrs. Sterne and Lydia
had other projects in mind for easing their fortune, in one
of which they were anticipated by Hall-Stevenson. It is

* Sterne's forty-second sermon and Newman's Idea of a University.

480 LAURENCE STERNE

doubtful whether they could have pieced together in any sort
of narrative the notes left by Sterne towards the concluding
volumes of the Sentimental Journey, which had been prom-
ised to subscribers at this time. Still, they must have been
surprised when Eugenius appeared in London with the manu-
script of Torick's Sentimental Journey completed in two
volumes, to which was prefixed a short memoir of Sterne,
remarkable for its inaccuracies and the advertisement that
the work had been based upon the "facts, events, and
observations" of the last part of Mr. Sterne's travels abroad,
as related to the author in the intimacy of friendship. Not-
withstanding the claim, Hall-Stevenson did little more than
retell the familiar incidents of the Sentimental Journey,
everywhere vulgarising them. It was the author's plan to
represent Torick as revisiting the old scenes and describing
the changes wrought by a year or two. The grisette of silken
eyelashes was glad to see her old friend again and to sell him
more gloves. Hearing at Moulins that Maria had just died
of a broken heart, Yoriek sought out her grave, that he might
shed a tear upon it as a last tribute to virtue. Of the tour
through Italy, for which all readers were expectant, there was
no word. And yet, without serious censure, this impudent
fraud upon the public easily passed current at home and on
the Continent.

Another project was suggested to the Sternes by "Wilkes
on one of their visits to his prison. He offered to write for
their benefit the authorised biography of Sterne, provided
Hall-Stevenson, who had just shown his biographical skill,
could be drawn into partnership with him. Widow and
daughter thereupon broached the scheme to the master of
Skelton, who readily consented to have his name associated
with the man most talked of in England. As her part in the
undertaking, Lydia was to collect and arrange her father's
correspondence supplementary to the memoir, and to draw
a frontispiece for each volume. At near the same time, a
new edition of Tristram Shandy was also to be brought out in
six volumes, with six illustrations — the two well-known ones
by Hogarth (Trim's reading the sermon, and the baptism of
Tristram), and four new ones by Lydia, of which she sub-

LYDIA AND HER MOTHER 481

mitted three sentimental subjects to Wilkes for his approval :
"Maria with the goat, with my father beside her"; "the
sick-bed of poor Le Fevre * * * with Uncle Toby and Trim
by his bedside" ; and "Le Fevre 's son with the picture of his
mother in his hand, the cushion by his bed-side on which he
has just prayed". In the meantime, Becket was to be brow-
beaten, on the threat of giving the work to another publisher,
into promising £400 for the "Life of Mr. Sterne" written by
"two men of such genius as Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Hall".

These expectations, an observer might have seen, were
doomed from the first to disappointment. Hall-Stevenson,
though of the best intentions, was too indolent for the serious
labours of a biographer; and Wilkes, just then the centre of
the political universe, was too busy with his trial for out-
lawry, and with manifestoes and Middlesex elections, to employ
his pen for others. Lydia had none of the talent necessary
for editing her father's letters, and her amateurish drawings
would have excited ridicule when brought into competition
with Hogarth's masterpieces. As yet not disillusioned, Mrs.
Sterne and her daughter retired for an indefinite period to
Angouleme in southern France, where they resumed the
genteel life of other days. "Angouleme is a pretty town",
Lydia wrote to Wilkes on July 22, 1769, not long after her
arrival; "the country most delightful, and from the principal
walk there is a very fine prospect; a serpentine river, which
joins the Garonne at Bourdeaux, has a very good effect ; trees
in the middle of it, which form little islands, where the

inhabitants go and take the fresco: in short, 'tis a most

pleasing prospect ; and I know no greater pleasure than sitting
by the side of the river, reading Milton or Shakspeare to my
mother. Sometimes I take my guitar and sing to her. Thus
do the hours slide away imperceptibly ; with reading, writing,
drawing, and music. * * * We receive much civility from
the people here. We had letters of recommendation, which
I would advise every English person to procure wherever he
goes in France. We have visitors, even more than we wish

as we ever found the French in general very insipid. I

would rather choose to converse with people much superior

31

482 LAURENCE STERNE

to me in understanding (that I grant I can easily do, so you
need not smile)."

Already the girl had misgivings about the biography.
"It is now time", the letter went on to say, "to remind
Mr. Wilkes of his kind promise — to exhort him to fulfil it.
If you knew, dear sir, how much we are straitened as to our
income, you would not neglect it. We should be truly happy
to be so much obliged to you that we may join, to our ad-
miration of Mr. Wilkes in his public character, tears of
gratitude whenever we hear his name mentioned, for the
peculiar service he has rendered us. Much shall we owe to
Mr. Hall for that and many other favours ; but to you do we
owe the kind intention which we beg you to put in practice.
As I know Mr. Hall is somewhat lazy, as you were the pro-
moter, write to him yourself: he will be more attentive to
what you say." Lydia began to fear, too, that she would be
unable to furnish the illustrations for the work without the
assistance of a drawing-master. And the correspondence of
her father, on further examination, was quite different from
what she and her mother expected. "Entre nous", she in-
formed Wilkes, "we neither of us wish to publish those
Letters; but if we cannot do otherwise, we will, and prefix
the Life to them." A note was earnestly requested from
Wilkes, which should be addressed to "Mademoiselle Sterne,
demoiselle Angloise, chez Mons. Bologne, Rue Cordeliers",
to advise her in her perplexities over the drawings and the
letters, and to assure her that in any case Mr. Wilkes would
perform his part in the undertaking.

Through the long summer into the autumn, Lydia looked
every day for a reply from Wilkes which never came ; while
in the meantime ready money had disappeared, and all that
had been placed with Panchaud was in danger of being lost
by the banker's unexpected failure in July. In desperation,
Lydia again wrote a pitiable letter to Wilkes, dated Octo-
ber 24, 1769, to remind him once more of his obligations and
to hold him up to them if possible. "How long", she pleaded
with him, "have I waited with impatience for a letter from
Mr. Wilkes, in answer to that I wrote him above two months
ago! I fear he is not well; I fear his own affairs have not

LYDIA AND HER MOTHER 483

allowed him time to answer me ; in short, I am full of fears.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Three lines, with a
promise of writing Tristram's Life for the benefit of his

widow and daughter, would make us happy. A promise,

did I say? that I already have: but a second assurance.
Indeed, my dear sir, since I last wrote we stand more in need
of such an act of kindness. Panchaud's failure has hurt us
considerably: we have, I fear, lost more than, in our circum-
stances, we could afford to lose. Do not, I beseech you,
disappoint us: let me have a single line from you, 'I will
perform my promise', and joy will take place of our sorrow.
I trust you will write to Hall; in pity, do."

Near the same time, the distressed girl wrote to Hall-
Stevenson in similar vein. Autumn passed and winter came
on with no word from either of her father's biographers.
Upon Wilkes she could intrude no further, but to Hall-
Stevenson was sent a last letter, requesting the courtesy of a
reply if nothing more :

"Angouleme, Feb. 13, 1770.
"Dear Sir,

' ' 'Tis at least six months since I wrote to you on an inter-
esting subject to us; namely, to put you in mind of a kind
promise you made me, of assisting Mr. Wilkes in the scheme
he had formed for our benefit, of writing the Life of Mr.
Sterne. I wrote also to him; but you have neither of you
favoured me with an answer. If you ever felt what 'hope
deferred' occasions, you would not have put us under that
painful situation. From whom the neglect arises, I know
not; but surely a line from you, dear sir, would not have
cost you much trouble. Tax me not with boldness for using
the word neglect: as you both promised, out of the benevo-
lence of your hearts, to write my father's Life for the benefit
of his widow and daughter; and as I myself look upon a
promise as sacred, and I doubt not but you think as I do ; in
that case the word is not improper. In short, dear sir, I ask
but this of you ; to tell me by a very short letter, whether we
may depend on yours and Mr. Wilkes's promise, or if we must
renounce the pleasing expectation. But, dear sir, consider

484 LAURENCE STEENE

that the fulfilling of it may put £400 into our pockets ; and
that the declining it would be unkind, after having made us
hope and depend upon that kindness. Let this plead my
excuse.

"If you do not choose to take the trouble to wait on Mr.
Wilkes, send him my letter, and let me know the oui ou le
non. Still let me urge, press, and entreat Mr. Hall, to be as
good as his word: if he will interest himself in our behalf,
'twill but be acting consistent with his character ; 'twill prove

that Eugenius was the friend of Yorick nothing can prove

it stronger than befriending his widow and daughter. Adieu,
dear sir! Believe me your most obliged, humble servant,
L. Sterne.

"My mother joins in best compliments."

This letter was turned over to Wilkes in accordance with
Lydia's request; and therewith ended the project for a
biography of Sterne, supplemented by his original letters
and embellished with original drawings by his daughter.
Throughout the transaction a reader's sympathy at this late
date rests with Lydia and her mother, who were betrayed by
two affable gentlemen who broke promises as readily as they
made them. On the other hand, the conduct of widow and
daughter, if not exactly censurable, had been lacking in good
taste and respectful consideration for Sterne's memory. All
along, their one aim had been to make the most out of his
literary remains. His sermons, most of which should have
been committed to the flames, had been put up at auction to
the highest bidder; and the only object in now publishing
his life and letters was to obtain another handsome sum.
This eagerness to turn every scrap of manuscript into coin,
not quite excusable on the ground of straitened circum-
stances, was sufficient in itself to alienate many of Sterne's
friends. Becket, merely because he asked for the credit to
which he had been accustomed in Sterne's time, was called
"a dirty fellow"; and Mrs. James, as well as Wilkes and
Hall-Stevenson, grew tired of tales of hard fortune reiterated
to monotony. To the further discredit of the Sternes, soon
came out the secret of dealings with Mrs. Draper which must
be stamped as dishonourable.

LYDIA AND HER MOTHER 485

Mrs. Draper, after a long but pleasant voyage, our narra-
tive should explain, had safely reached Bombay early in
1768, "once more restored to health and strength". Her
husband she found "in possession of health and a good post",
and her sister Louisa, a widow after an unfortunate mar-
riage, now in course of becoming wife to Colonel Pemble,
then in command of the military forces at Bombay. "I live
intirely in the Country with my dear Louisa", she wrote
from High Meadow in the suburbs to her aunt Elizabeth,
"bathe in the Sea daily, drink Milk, and have commenced
Horsewoman". This agreeable life with a sister who had
grown attractive in her widowhood, had to be given up in
the autumn because of Draper's transference to Tellicherry,
as chief of the factory at that station. But it so turned out
that Mrs. Draper was never happier than during the first
months in her new sphere, where according to the exigencies
of the occasion, she played in turn the parts of "wife of a
Merchant, soldier and Innkeeper, for in such different capa-
cities", she wrote pleasantly, "is the chief of Tellicherry
destined to act". And when her husband lost his two clerks,
she took charge for a time of all his correspondence. This
temporary position in his office she enjoyed much, she wrote
home, because "it gives me consequence, and him pleasure".
"The Country", to go on further with her intimate letters,
"is pleasant, and healthy (a second Montpelier) ; our house
(A Fort and property of the Company), a Magnificent one
furnish 'd too at our Masters expence and the allowance for
supporting it Creditably, what you would term genteely, tho'
it does not defray the charges of our Liqours, which alone
amount to 600 a year ; and such a sum, vast as it seems, is not
extravagant in our situation, — for we are obliged to keep a
Public Table — and six months in the Year, have a full
house of shipping Gentry — that resort to us for traffic and
Intelligence, from all parts of India, China, and Asia."

In these new surroundings were resumed the recreations
begun with her sister at High Meadow. "I ride on Horse-
back daily", she informed her cousin Tom, "I bathe in the
Sea, read Volumes, and fill Reams of Paper, writing scrib-
ble." To her life at Tellicherry came additional zest from

486 LAUEENCE STERNE

the perilous situation of the settlement at this time, for Hyder
Ali and the fierce Mahrattas then held in subjection the
territory about the town, and were infesting the coast as far
north as Bombay, interfering with traffic on the sea and
rendering unsafe passage from one station to another without
a convoy. Under these circumstances, Mrs. Draper was
always attended in her rides to the beach and in the neigh-
bourhood by "a guard of six sepoys armed with drawn
Sabres and loaded Pistols", while a faithful Malabar servant
followed her everywhere like a shadow. In spite of these
precautions for her safety, "I was within an hour once", she

wrote of Hyder Ali, "of being his Prisoner and cannot

say, but I thought it a piece of good fortune to escape that
honour — tho' he has promised to treat all English Ladies
well, that chearfully submit to the Laws of his Seraglio."
One letter speaks of sorrow for the death of "our poor little
boy" left behind in England with his sister; and there were
moments in this uncertain life when she longed for the
flatteries of those who told her that she was born for the
stage or the salon rather than for India; but as yet Mrs.
Draper was content to reign as queen of the little settlement
on the Malabar Coast.

Yes : she was saying with Caesar that it was better to be
first at Tellicherry than second at Bombay, where her sister
now held the first place, riding "in an Ivory Pallenquin
inlaid with Gold", and glittering "in Diamonds together with

faring sumptuously every Day", she was saying all this

grandiloquently when news reached her out of England, from
letters and from all she talked with in the Company's ships,
that Mrs. Sterne was threatening to make a public scandal of
her relations with Yorick by publishing their tender cor-
respondence. There was really nothing in those sentimental
relations, Mrs. Draper averred in a letter to her cousin Tom,
which could not be justified, were truth and candour her
judges; but an ungenerous world, she was equally aware,
would read whatever it pleased into her letters should they
be once published. Under the impending exposure, Mrs.
Draper suffered for months keen torture, during which she
denounced the whole Sterne family, not omitting Yorick him-

LYDIA AND HEE MOTHER 487

self, because he had flattered her into an indiscreet cor-
respondence.

As soon, however, as she understood the reason for Mrs.
Sterne's conduct, she gained her poise and acted accordingly.
On receiving the news of Sterne's death, Mrs. Draper,
supposing that Mrs. Sterne was also dead or "privately-
confined" as an insane person, had immediately sent an invi-
tation to Lydia to come out to the East and share her own
prospects as friend and companion. At this letter Mrs.
Sterne became furious since, it contained no reference to
herself, as if she were a nonentity; and Lydia in a belated
reply resented the gratuitous interference. In this mood,
Lydia and her mother came up to London under the patron-
age of Mrs. James, who seems to have placed in their hands
Mrs. Draper's letters to Sterne, discovered in his lodgings at
death, together with the Journal to Eliza. There were also
in London copies of Sterne's letters to Mrs. Draper, which
Mrs. Draper herself had thoughtlessly made for some curious
friend, just as she had sent one of them to her cousin Tom.
These likewise seem to have come into possession of the widow
and daughter. At any rate, all or the major part of the
correspondence between Yorick and Eliza, it was rumoured,
would appear among the original letters accompanying the
biography by "Wilkes and Hall-Stevenson. The truth of this
rumour was subsequently confirmed either through Mrs.
James or directly by Lydia, who sought to excuse herself and
her mother on the score of necessity. Money must be had
and the letters were now the only available source. Quick
to take the* hint, Mrs. Draper wrote to Mrs. James on the
impulse of the moment: "0 my dear Friend, for God sake,

pay them all the money of mine in your Hands would it

were twice as much! the Ring too is much at Mrs. Sterne's
service — as should be every thing I have in the world, rather
than I would freely owe the shaddow of an obligation to
her."

On the tacit if not formal understanding that her letters
should be deposited with Mrs. James, Mrs. Draper promised
to pay Becket whatever he might hope to profit by their
publication should they be offered to him, and to make up a

488 LAURENCE STERNE

generous purse for the Sternes out of India. Fulfilling the
essential half of the promise, she began sending Mrs. James
various small bills for the benefit of Mrs. Sterne and Lydia,
which in the course of two or three years amounted to twelve
hundred rupees. Half of the sum came from the contribu-
tions of acquaintances immediately surrounding her; and
half was collected at her urgent request by Colonel Donald
Campbell of Barbreck among his fellow officers at Bengal.
As an inducement to his share in the work, Mrs. Draper drew
a very flattering portrait, of Lydia in one of her letters to
Colonel Campbell, suggesting that he seek an introduction to
Miss Sterne on his next visit to England and bring her back
as his wife. And to prepare Lydia for his coming, she sent
a similar portrait of the colonel to Mrs. James, saying: "He
is, I think, one of ten thousand — sensible, sweet tempered,
and Amiable, to a very great degree — added to which, lively,
comical and accomplished — Young, Handsome, rich, and a

Soldier! What fine Girl would wish more?"*

For this happy sequel to a transaction which humiliated
Mrs. Draper as much as it discredited Mrs. Sterne, Colonel
Campbell arrived in England a year or more too late. Ap-
parently in the autumn of 1770, Mrs. Sterne and Lydia left
Angouleme, migrating south to Albi, a lovely brick-built town
on the Tarn, not far from their old friends at Toulouse. As
at Angouleme, "they were welcomed", it has been said, "to
the best society" among "a quiet, pious people". This may
well be true, though no letter of theirs dated at Albi has been
discovered to confirm the statement. The archives of the
town, however, furnish startling information in regard to
Lydia. On April 28, 1772, she abjured the Protestant re-
ligion in the private chapel of the provost's house, and was
thereupon admitted to the Koman Catholic Church in order
to remove the last obstacle to her marriage on the same day
and in the same place with a certain Jean Baptiste Alexandre
de Medalle, described as only twenty years old, while Lydia
was in her twenty-fifth year. The young man belonged to

* Colonel Campbell was then twenty-two years old. There is an
account of him in James Douglas, Bombay and Western India I 425-27
(London, 1893).

LYDIA AND HER M0THE3 489

a good family, being the son of a gentleman employed in the
Customs at Albi under the title of receveur des decimes.
"Le mariage", it stands written in the Inventaire des
Archives Gommunales d'Albi, "etait force, urgent; car alors
la loi autorisait la recherche de la paternite."* Attempts
have been made to explain away this extraordinary gloss on
the marriage ; but its meaning should be clear to all who read,
as much as if it said in an Englishman's blunt French:
"Mademoiselle Sterne etait deja a I'epoque de son mariage
en chemin de devenir mere." By one of the ironies of fate
a letter was on its way from Mrs. Draper at the very time
of the inauspicious marriage, recommending to Miss Sterne
the favourable reception of Colonel Campbell.

Mrs. Sterne, it was stated, did not witness the scene in the
provost's chapel. Since coming into France she seems to
have been relapsing into her old malady, and to have been
thus spared the painful knowledge that Lydia had abjured
the faith of her childhood as the only means of preserving
her honour before the world. It is to be hoped that this was
the case, rather than that the marriage led to an estrange-
ment between mother and daughter and a voluntary life
apart during the few months that were yet left for the
mother. Sometime in the following January, Mrs. Sterne
died, at the house of a physician named Lionieres, at No. 9
Rue St. Antoine, within sight of the noble towers of Sainte
Cecile. So ended the life of the vivacious Miss Lumley of
the York Assembly Rooms, whose unhappiness began with
her husband's fame.

As a dramatic close to the career of Lydia, has grown up
a story that she and her husband took an active part in the
French Revolution and fell victims to the Reign of Terror.
In place of this legend can be presented only a few disjointed
facts, not half so striking as the conclusion to the old his-
torical romances dealing with the French Revolution, and yet
really quite as tragic as any of them. During the autumn

* For the record of Lydia 's marriage, the birth of a son, and Mrs.
Sterne's death, see Athenceum June 18, 1870; and Notes and Queries,
fourth series, VI, 153 and XII, 200. The search in the archives of
Albi was originally made by Paul Stapfer. His account as published
contains several inaccuracies which are here corrected.

490 LAURENCE STERNE

after her mother's death, Mrs. Medalle, as the sole heir, dis-
posed of all the real estate at Sutton-on-the-Forest, most likely
through the squire of Stillington, who had hitherto repre-
sented the Sternes in Yorkshire. The Tindall or Dawson
farm and the lands purchased of Eichard Harland were con-
veyed by herself and husband (described in the deed as
"gentleman") to the mortgagees, Dean Fountayne and
Stephen Croft. The dwellings and closes which came to
Sterne under the Sutton Enclosure Act were purchased in
part by Thomas Proud of Newburgh and in part by Robert
Wright of Claxton. All the conveyances bore as witnesses
to the signatures of the Medalles, it may be of interest to
note, the names of Jean Francois Gardes and Guierre Limory
of Albi, who, we may suppose, were friends of the family.*
Of Lydia's youthful husband our narrative has only one
word more. He died a year and some months later, leaving
with his widow a son born soon after the marriage.

Mrs. Medalle now took up again her father's correspond-
ence, the publication of which had been deferred rather than
abandoned on the withdrawal of Wilkes and Hall- Stevenson
from the undertaking. For performing the labour alone she
received much encouragement from the attitude of the public,
which was absorbing every year sentimental tales and jour-
neys put out in imitation of the original, while an anecdote
of the humourist or a letter purporting to be his found ready
admittance to newspapers and magazines. The first number of
the Lady's Magazine, for example, which was started in 1770,
opened with "A Sentimental Journey by a Lady", and three
years later a periodical called The Sentimental Magazine was
launched for promoting the sentimental style and philosophy
of the "inimitable" Yorick. The eagerness of the public to
read something more of Sterne's, or to know more about him,
led to many forgeries, of which may be mentioned an imag-
inary autobiography, eked out by moral sayings, that appeared
in 1770, bearing the title of The Posthumous Works of a late
Celebrated Genius, since known as The Koran, under which
name the forgery has been several times published in editions

* Three deeds comprising the transaction were registered at North-
allerton, one on May 4, and the other two on May 30, 1774.

LTDIA AND HEE MOTHER 491

of Sterne's works aiming at completeness. Its author, it
should have been known, was Richard Griffith the elder, who
betted with a friend that he could write a book which "would
pass current on the world as a writing of Mr. Sterne"; and
won (as he said himself) the bet.* Not much, however, really
Sterne's, appeared between 1769 and February 1775, when a
sensation was caused by the publication of ten letters from
Sterne to Mrs. Draper, which served to float more forgeries,
sometimes interspersed with genuine scraps.

As if her arrival had been timed to profit most by this
awakened interest in Sterne, Mrs. Medalle came to London
sometime during the spring of 1775, with a rare collection of
letters, which she and Mrs. Sterne had brought together before
going into France, and to which additions were still to be
made through the summer. The daughter of Sterne took
genteel lodgings, sat for her portrait, and altogether dis-
played her father's skill in whetting the public appetite for
a new book by talk about it long in advance of publication.

"Speedily will be published", as she and Becket phrased
the advertisement for the newspaper, "Embellished with an
elegant engraving of Mrs. Medalle, from a picture by Mr.
West, (with a dedication to Mr. Garrick) Some Memoirs of
the Life and Family of the late Mr. Laurence Sterne.
"Written by Himself. To which will be added, 1. Genuine
Letters to his most intimate friends on various subjects, with
those to his wife, before and after marriage; as also those
written to his daughter. 2. A Fragment, in the manner of
Rabelais. Now first published by his daughter (Mrs. Me-
dalle) from the originals in her father's hand-writing.

"Printed for T. Becket, Adelphi, in the Strand.

"Mrs. Medalle begs leave to return her most grateful
thanks to those Ladies and Gentlemen who have already
favoured her with so many of her father's letters, and still
intreats those who may have any by them, to send them to her
Bookseller as above, (as speedily as possible) that they may
be inserted in the edition now prepared for the press. ' '

After repeated advertisements of this kind, the letters

* See Griffith's anonymous Something New, II, 152 (second edition,
London, 1772).

492 LAURENCE STERNE

and miscellanies — three volumes in the whole — were at length
published on October 25, 1775. The title was varied from
the announcement to "Letters of the late Rev. Mr. Lau-
rence Sterne, to his most intimate Friends. With a Frag-
ment in the Manner of Babelais. To which are prefix 'd,
Memoirs of His Life and Family. Written by Himself.
And Published by his Daughter, Mrs. Medalle." The por-
trait by West, which was engraved by Caldwell for a frontis-
piece, represented Lydia in the fashionable dress of the
period bending over the bust of her father, with one hand
resting on his laurelled head and the other holding a sheet of
manuscript. In no better taste was the dedication to Garrick,
which aimed helplessly at the whimsical style of Sterne. A
brief preface, following Garrick 's epitaph, assured the public
that the authenticity of the letters might be depended upon.
Some of them, said Mrs. Medalle, had been preserved by her
mother, and others had been furnished by her father's friends,
from whom she had "experienced much benevolence and
generosity". Then followed two elegies, reprinted from the
magazines, in one of which Sterne was ranked next to Shake-
speare. After these introductory details, came the brief
autobiography that Sterne wrote near his death to satisfy
Lydia 's curiosity, and one hundred and eighteen letters, if
we count An Impromptu forming part of a letter which was
sent to the publisher by a certain S. P., living at Exeter.
The third volume concluded with The Fragment in the Man-
ner of Babelais, which appears to have been a discarded
digression originally written for the fourth volume of Tris-
tram Shandy.

The autobiography was a masterly piece of condensation,
what the French call a prScis, wherein one continuous para-
graph, running over a few pages, sufficed the author for the
story of his ancestry and of his life down to the first visit to
France, to say nothing of whimsical comment and anecdote
by the way. No wonder that Jhe marvellous sketch, as the
first authentic revelation of Sterne in the pre-Shandean
period, was widely quoted in magazines and newspapers,
where it was usually given the place of honour on the first
page. And for Sterne in his intimacies were the sentimental

LYDIA AND HEB MOTHEE 493

outpourings of the young Prebendary of York in letters to
Miss Lumley while she was away in the country ; descriptions
of his doings in London in the first flush of his fame, sent
down to his friend Stephen Croft, the squire of Stillington;
reckless impromptus to Hall-Stevenson and the London smart
set; promises of amendment to Warburton; his first French
triumph all written out for Garrick; and his last letter to
Mrs. James as he lay dying. Surely no one could ask for
more. Walpole of course intended a compliment when he
wrote to Mason two days after publication: "I have run
through a volume of Sterne's Letters, and have read more
unentertaining stuff."

In view of the rich material that Mrs. Medalle thus pre-
sented to the public, perhaps one should not be too insistent
on her shortcomings as an editor. Misprints, mistakes in
French phrases, and misnumbering of letters may be set
down, if one wishes, to the ignorance of the compositor.
Neither should a reader complain overmuch because proper
names were suppressed, or indicated by their first and last
letters or by an initial before a dash or a line of stars, for
such was the custom of the day. People then liked to guess

that D d G k, Esq., meant David Garrick, Esq., and

to count the eight stars of the Earl 0fS********
into the Earl of Shelburne. » The task of editing Sterne's
letters, it must be admitted further, would have been difficult
for anyone however skilled, since many of them bore no date.
Still Mrs. Medalle can not be excused for making slight at-
tempt to place them in chronological sequence, for throwing
them together, as it were, helter-skelter, so that they tell no
continuous story. She began by assigning the Croft letters
of 1760 to the indefinite period before the appearance of
Tristram Shandy, and, with some improvements here and
there, she proceeded in this slip-shod path to the end. It
would, indeed, be difficult to find in the entire range of liter-
ary biography a more shiftless piece of work.

To incompetency Mrs. Medalle added an amusing dis-
honesty wherever her mother or Mrs. Draper was concerned.
The merry references to Mrs. Sterne were eliminated from all
the correspondence except the Latin epistle to Hall-Stevenson,

494 LAUEENCE STEENE

which Lydia evidently could not read, else she would never
have permitted to stand: "Nescio quid est materia cum me,
sed sum fatigatus et cegrotus de mea uxore plus quam un-
quam." And in all the sentimental passages on Eliza, her por-
trait, and her journal, the editor either substituted her own
name or removed the warmth of phrase, leaving them quite
cool and harmless. Just how she did this, it will be pleasant
to see. To a letter from Coxwold to the Jameses in the sum-
mer of 1767, Sterne appended a long postscript from which
we have already quoted :

"I have just received as a present from a right Honour-
able a most elegant gold snuff fabricated for me at Paris

I wish Eliza was here, I would lay it at her feet however,

I will enrich my gold Box, with her picture, and if the

Donor does not approve of such an acquisition to his pledge
of friendship — I will send him his Box again

"May I presume to inclose you the Letter I write to Mrs.

Draper 1 know you will write yourself and my Letter

may have the honour to chaperon yours to India. Mrs. Sterne
and my daughter are coming to stay a couple of months with

[me], as far as from Avignion — and then return Here's

Complaisance for you 1 went five hundred miles the last

Spring, out of my way, to pay my wife a week's visit —
and she is at the expence of coming post a thousand miles

to return it — what a happy pair! however, en passant,

she takes back sixteen hundred pounds into France with her
— and will do me the honour likewise to strip me of every
thing I have — except Eliza's Picture. Adieu."

After passing through Lydia 's hands, the postscript came
out reduced to the following brief paragraph :

"I have just received, as a present from a man I shall
ever love, a most elegant gold snuff box, fabricated for me at

Paris 'tis not the first pledge I have received of his

friendship. May I presume to enclose you a letter of chit-
chat which I shall write to Eliza? I know you will write
yourself, and my letter may have the honour to chaperon

yours to India they will neither of them be the worse

received for going together in company, but I fear they will

LYDIA AND HER MOTHER 495

get late in the year to their destined port, as they go first to
Bengal."

The motives for most of these changes are apparent
enough. But why "a right Honourable" — meaning, it would
seem, Sir George Macartney — should be turned into "a man
I shall ever love" is an enigma. "Whether mutilations like
this extend generally through the letters edited by Mrs.
Medalle, there are no means of determining, for few of the
originals are now extant. It would of course be unfair to
infer from one or two instances that Lydia everywhere played
fast and loose with the text; it is more likely that she was
content, unless her mother and Mrs. Draper were involved,
merely to improve her father 's style by substituting here and
there a commonplace expression for his piquant phrases.

Her mission to England over, Mrs. Medalle returned to
Albi. The rest of her story may be told, so far as one knows
it, in a single sentence. Her son was placed in the Benedic-
tine school at Soreze, where he died in 1783, his mother, it
was expressly stated, being already dead. Asthmatic from
childhood, Lydia had doubtless succumbed to the same disease
that her father so long struggled against only to be overcome
in the end. The little boy, "not made to last long", any
more than were Sterne's brothers and sisters, was the last
descendant of the humourist.

CHAPTER XXIII

MRS. DRAPER

Mes. Draper, too, was already dead after an eventful
career since we last saw her as queen of Tellicherry, attended
in her progresses by a guard of sepoys. In 1771, her hus-
band was appointed chief of the factory at Surat, the most
lucrative position he had yet held, whence she wrote on her
birthday a long letter to her cousin Tom descriptive of a
typical day with friends amid the new scenes.* Every morn-
ing she rose with the lark and ambled out on her palfrey eight
or ten miles, after the fox sometimes, and at rarer intervals
joining large parties in the hunt for antelopes with leopards.
At night there was an occasional dance followed by supping
on a cool terrace till daybreak. But despite exercise in the
open air and an abstemious diet, consisting of "soupe and
vegetables with sherbet and milk", her health, she com-
plained, was breaking under the fierce heats of Surat; and
scandal, do what she might, persisted in pursuing her, all
because she liked the conversation of sensible men better than
the unmeaning chit-chat of the women around her. Far
from being the "gay, dissipated, agreeable woman" that she
was accounted by "the worldly wise", she would have much
preferred to the life she was living at Surat the quiet of a
"thatched palace" in England, with her books and an
appreciative husband who could moralise with her the rural
scene.

The next year, Draper was removed from his position at
Surat and recalled to Bombay, not because of any inefficiency
on his part, but owing, it was said, to a cabal formed against
him. "We are adventurers again", Mrs. Draper wrote home

* The account of Mrs. Draper is based mostly upon manuscript let-
ters described in the bibliography. See also a chapter on Mrs. Draper
and incidental references to her in James Douglas, Bombay and Western
India.

4U6

MRS. DRAPER 497

from Bombay, "and so much to seek for "Wealth as we were
the first Day of our landing here". Neither husband nor
wife was able to withstand adversity, though but temporary.
There were hot altercations between them, culminating in
criminations and recriminations which need be touched on
but lightly. The ostensible point of dispute, to begin with,
was over Mrs. Draper's return to England. Her husband,
she claimed, had distinctly promised her that she might be
with her daughter on her twelfth birthday, occurring in
October, 1773. A longer sojourn in India, she often repeated,
would mean a ruined constitution and quick-coming death.
Draper, who perhaps did not deny his promise, pleaded the
expense of the journey and of a life apart. If his wife's
health were declining, she might follow the advice of her
physician and visit the neighbouring hot springs, which were
as good as any in England.

The troubles between husband and wife were reaching an
acute stage in the spring of 1772, when Mrs. Draper described
her unhappy situation in two letters home — one to her cousin
Tom and one to Mrs. James, which, taken together, really
constitute an autobiography covering more than a hundred
pages of print. Now thoroughly disillusioned, Mrs. Draper
passed in review her trivial education, the ill-starred mar-
riage to a "cool, phlegmatic" official, who was accusing her
of intrigues which she had no opportunity of committing were
she disposed to them, the friendship with Sterne, the efforts
to aid his widow and daughter, her literary aims and ambi-
tions, and the sorrow that was fast settling close upon her.
Of Sterne she said, "I was almost an Idolater of His Worth,
while I fancied him the Mild, Generous, Good Torick, we had
so often thought him to be". But "his Death", she must
add with words underscored, "gave me to know, that he was
tainted with the Vices of Injustice, meanness and Folly". Of
herself and husband, she wrote to Mrs. James: "I cannot
manage to acquire confirmed Health in this detested Coun-
try ; and what is far worse, I cannot induce Mr. Draper to let
me return to England; tho' he must be sensible, that both my
Constitution and Mind, are suffering by the effects of a
Warm Climate 1 do, and must wonder that he will not,

32

498 LAURENCE STERNE

for what good Purpose my Residence here can promote, I am
quite at a loss to imagine, as I am disposed to think favor-
ably of Mr. D's Generosity and Principles. My dear James,
it is evident to the whole of our Acquaintance, that our
Minds are not pair'd, and therefore I will not scruple inform-
ing you — that I neither do, nor will any more, if I can help

it live with him as a Wife my reasons for this are cogent ;

be assured they are ; — or I would not have formed the Reso-
lution 1 explain them not to the World — tho' I could do

it, and with credit to myself ; but for that very cause I will

persevere in my silence as I love not selfish Panegyricks.

How wretched must be that Woman's Fate, my dear

James, who loving Home, and having a Taste for the Acquit-
ments [sic], both useful and Agreable, can find nothing
congenial in her Partner's Sentiments — nothing companion-
able, nothing engagingly domestic in his Manner, to endear
his Presence, nor even any thing of that Great, or respectful
sort, which creates Public Praise, and by such means, often
lays the Foundation of Esteem, and Complacency at Home."
The sad record was relieved by many charming feminine
traits of character and ennobled by the mother yearning to
be with her daughter left behind in England.

One aspect of the self-drawn portrait has especial interest
somewhat apart from the approaching crisis in her relations
with her husband. Since her return to India Mrs. Draper
had developed into a Blue-Stocking. She had of course no
personal acquaintance with Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, whose
assemblies of Blue-Stockings were then famous ; but the Essay
on the Writings and Genius of ShaTcespear duly reached
India. After reading Mrs. Montagu's book, Mrs. Draper
declared that she "would rather be an Attendant on her
Person, than the first Peeress of the Realm". And so under
this new inspiration Mrs. Draper resumed the scribbling to
which she had been encouraged by Sterne. "A little piece
or two" that she "discarded some years ago", were com-
pleted; they were "not perhaps unworthy of the press", but
they were never printed. Though these efforts seem to be
lost, Mrs. Draper took advantage of the occasion to weave
into her letter to Mrs. James various little essays, which may

MRS. DRAPER 499

be described in her phrase as "of the moral kind", because
they have to do with practical conduct. Anxiety for the
welfare of her daughter Betsey, who had been put to school
at Kensington, leads to several pages on the boarding-school
and the parlour-boarder, which are good enough to find a
place in one of Mrs. Chapone's essays. A little way on, she
relates the "story of a married pair, which", she says,
"pleased me greatly, from the sensible singularity of it".
The tale tells of a wealthy and indolent man in North India
who married a smart young woman to "rouse his mind from
its usual state of Inactivity" — and he succeeded. The wife,
too, discarded her light airs, and became a most agreeable
woman. It all reads like a character sketch from Margaret,
Duchess of Newcastle. There is also an experiment in the
sentimental style, wherein is told the story of "a smart pretty
French woman", who, shutting out all promiscuous loves and
friendships, kept her heart for her dear husband alone and
one "sweet woman" across the Alps. "The lovely Jana-
tone", writes Mrs. Draper, "died three Years ago — after
surviving her Husband about a "Week and her Friend a
twelvemonth." This constant couple, she said, were travel-
ling in England when she was there, and Sterne introduced
them to her. And besides these, there are other sketches
from life, and vivid descriptions of society at Bombay. If
Eliza did not write exactly, as Sterne flattered her, "with an
angel's pen", she knew how to ramble agreeably.

Crudities that appear in Mrs. Draper's written speech
were not observable in her conversation, which charmed the
circle of young civilians and travellers who gathered round
her at Bombay. To her more intimate friendship was ad-
mitted a certain George Horsley, who used to sit and read
poetry to her. Illness sent him back to England, with
extravagant letters of recommendation from her to the
Sclaters and the Jameses, as a young man possessing "one of
the most active Minds and Generous Hearts that ever I knew
inhabit a human Frame". To his care she entrusted dia-
mond rings and other jewels valued at £600, which he was
to sell for her in England. She gave her passport, too, to a
Mr. Gambier, "a fine youth and dear to me and all who know

500 LAURENCE STERNE

him on the score of his Worth, strict Principles, and Admira-
ble Manners". Much greater men than these, typical of
many, came under her spell. James Forbes, author of
Oriental Memoirs, knew her well when a young man, and
remembered to the end her "refined tastes and accomplish-
ments".* Likewise the Abbe Raynal, the historian of the
Indies, made her acquaintance at Bombay, and experienced
at their first meeting a sensation which puzzled him. "It
was too warm", he said, "to be no more than friendship; it
was too pure to be love. Had it been a passion, Eliza would
have pitied me; she would have endeavoured to bring me
back to my reason, and I should have completely lost it."
And of the personality that awakened his admiration, the
ecclesiastic added: "Eliza's mind was cultivated, but the
effects of this art were never perceived. It had done nothing
more than embellish nature; it served in her case only to
make the charm more lasting. Every instant increased the
delight she inspired; every instant rendered her more
interesting, "t

Mrs. Draper's sentimental friendships with young men,
from whom she accepted costly presents, were quite sufficient
to occasion comment and arouse suspicions in her husband,
though there may have been, as she always averred, no harm
in her conduct beyond impropriety from the standpoint of
convention. On the other hand, to restate her side of the
story, her husband had been engaged, ever since her return
to India, in one coarse intrigue after another. During their
last year together — for it had come to that — the Drapers
lived at Marine House, Mazagon, sometimes called Belvidere
House, commanding a fine prospect of Bombay and its
harbour. Through the year Mrs. Draper continued to insist
on her husband's fulfilment of his promise with reference to
the visit to England, and he continued to remain hopelessly
immovable in his refusal. The long impending crisis came
early in January, 1773, when the time for Mrs. Draper's
sailing was at hand, were she to arrive in England by her

* Oriental Memoirs, I, 338-39 (London, 1813).

t Raynal, Bistowe PhilosopMque et FolMique, * * * cleS Europeens
dans les deux Indes, II, 88-89 (new edition, Avignon, 1786).

MRS. DRAPER 501

daughter's birthday. On the evening of Monday, the eleventh
of January, occurred an altercation between husband and
wife in which each, it would seem, accused the other of mis-
conduct, Mr. Draper naming Sir John Clark of the British
navy, and Mrs. Draper retaliating with the name of Miss
Leeds, one of her women in attendance, whom she claimed
had fabricated the story against herself out of jealousy.
Driven to desperation, Mrs. Draper fled from Marine House
on the night of the following Thursday, and placed herself
under the protection of her admirer, thus lending colour to
the suspicions of her husband. She escaped, it was said at
the time, by letting herself down to the officer's ship by a
rope from her window.*

Three letters are extant which Mrs. Draper wrote on the
evening of her elopement. In the first of them, she gave "a
faithful servant and friend", one Eliza Mihill, about to re-
turn to England, an order on George Horsley for all her
jewels. "Accept it, my dear woman", wrote Mrs. Draper,
"as the best token in my power, expressive of my good- will
to you. ' ' To Mr. Horsley she addressed a brief, impassioned
note explaining what she had done for Betty Mihill and
what she was about to do for her own freedom. The third
letter, which was left behind for Mr. Draper in justification
of her conduct, was composed under great agitation of mind
at the moment of the last perilous step, for which she took
full responsibility. After beseeching that her husband tem-
per justice with mercy if he believed her "all in fault", Mrs.
Draper proceeded to plead her cause :

"I speak in the ,singular number, because I would not
wound you by the mention of a name that I know must be
displeasing to you; but, Draper, believe me for once, when I
solemnly assure you, that it is you only who have driven me
to serious Extremities. But from the conversation on Mon-
day last he had nothing to hope, or you to fear. Lost to
reputation, and all hopes of living with my dearest girl on
peaceable or creditable terms, urged by a despair of gaining
any one point with you, and resenting, strongly resenting,
I own it your avowed preference of Leeds to myself, I myself
* David Price, Memoirs * * * of a Field Officer, 61 (1839).

502 LAUBENCE STEBNE

Proposed the scheme of leaving you thus abruptly. Forgive
me, Draper, if its accomplishment has excited anguish; but
if pride is only wounded by the measure, sacrifice that I
beseech you to the sentiment of humanity, as indeed you
may, and may be amply revenged in the compunction I shall
feel to the hour of my death, for a conduct that will so utterly
disgrace me with all I love, and do not let this confirm the
prejudice imbibed by Leed's tale, as I swear to you that was
false, though my present mode of acting may rather seem
the consequence of it than of a more recent event. Oh ! that
prejudice had not been deaf to the reasonable requests of a
wounded spirit, or that you, Draper could have read my very
soul, as undisguisedly, as sensibility and innocence must ever
wish to be read!

"But this is too like recrimination which I would wish to
avoid. I can only say in my justification, Draper, that if
you imagine I plume myself on the Success of my scheme,
you do me a great wrong. My heart bleeds for what I sup-
pose may possibly be the sufferings of yours, though too
surely had you loved, all this could never have been. My
head is too much disturbed to write with any degree of
connection. No matter, for if your own mind does not sug-
gest palliatives, all I can say will be of little avail. I go,
I know not whither, but I will never be a tax on you, Draper.
Indeed, I will not, and do not suspect me of being capable
of adding to my portion of infamy. I am not a hardened or
depraved creature — I never will be so. The enclosed are the
only bills owing that I know of, except about six rupees to
Doojee, the shoemaker. I have never meant to load myself
with many spoils to your prejudice, but a moderate provision
of linen has obliged me to secure part of what was mine, to
obviate some very mortifying difficulties. The pearls and
silk cloathes are not in the least diminished. Betty's picture,
of all the ornaments, is the only one I have ventured to make
mine.

"I presume not to recommend any of the persons to you
who were immediately officiating about me; but this I con-
jure you to believe as strictly true, that not one of them or
any living soul in the Marine House or Mazagon, was at all

MES. DEAPEE 503

privy to my scheme, either directly or indirectly, nor do I
believe that any one of them had the smallest suspicion of
the matter; unless the too evident Concern occasioned by my
present conflict induced them to think Something extra-
ordinary was in agitation. 0 ! Draper ! a word, a look,
sympathetick of regret on Tuesday or "Wednesday would have
saved me the perilous adventure, and such a portion of re-
morse as would be sufficient to fill up the longer life. I
reiterate my request that vindictive measures may not be
pursued. Leave me to my fate I conjure you, Draper, and
in doing this you will leave me to misery inexpressible, for
you are not to think, that I am either satisfied with myself or
my prospects, though the latter are entirely my own seeking.

"God bless you, may health and prosperity be yours, and
happiness too, as I doubt not but it will, if you suffer your
resentments to be subdued by the aid of true and reasonable
reflections. Do not let that false idea of my triumphing
induce you to acts of vengeance I implore you, Draper, for
indeed that can never be, nor am I capable of bearing you
the least ill-will; or treating your name or memory with
irreverence, now that I have released myself from your
dominion. Suffer me but to be unmolested, and I will en-
gage to steer through life with some degree of approbation,
if not respect. Adieu! again Mr. Draper, and be assured I
have told you nothing but the truth, however it may clash
with yours and the general opinion."*

Mrs. Draper's elopement startled all civil and military
India, for no woman was more widely known in the Bast.
She became by this act the beautiful heroine of romance
rescued by her lover from the tyranny of an ill-sorted or
hateful marriage; she became another Guenevere or Iseult,
we should say nowadays. In her flight she sought refuge
with her rich uncle, Tom Whitehill, at Masulipatam — his
"seat of empire", whence he superintended the fiscal admin-
istration of five northern provinces ceded to the East India
Company at the close of the war with Hyder Ali. "His

* Mrs. Draper 's three farewell letters were published in the Times
of India, February 24, 1894; and in the overland weekly issue of March
3, 1894.

504 LAUEENCE STEENE

House, his Purse, Servants, Credit" were all placed at his
niece's devotion. While under the protection of her power-
ful uncle, Mrs. Draper could safely view from a distance the
fury of a husband who saw himself outwitted on all sides.
From the mayor's court at Bombay writs were obtained for
the arrest of Sir John Clark, but the process-server was
never able to find him.* And when the enraged husband
threatened an action for divorce, Mrs. Draper, with the aid
of her uncle, collected against him evidence to be placed in
the hands of his superior officers so damaging to his private
character that his better judgment called a halt to the con-
templated proceedings. He was made to see that he could
not proceed further against his wife without endangering all
hope of remunerative service for the future.

On going to her uncle's, it had been Mrs. Draper's inten-
tion to remain with him for the rest of her life should he
wish it, for her prospects of ever seeing England again were
then very remote. In the autumn of 1773, she accompanied
him to Rajahmundry, some eighty miles distant, where he
pitched his tents for the winter and began negotiations with
the zemindars, or petty princes of his provinces, over the land
taxes of the next three years. The novelty of life in tents,
joined with renewed health, put Mrs. Draper into spirits for
a time; but she soon found Rajahmundry as uncongenial to
her taste as was any other part of India. This restlessness
crept into a confidential letter to her cousin Tom of Hod-
dington, dated January 20, 1774, written to inform him of
her present situation. Her uncle, she told Tom, was an
"extraordinary character", upright in all his dealings with
the native princes, and generous to a degree she had never
before witnessed in any man; and yet, though possessing all
these good qualities, he was so passionate and jealous in his
affections that he could not brook any preference for others.
Some sign of preference, though sentimental, Mrs. Draper
showed in an unguarded moment for her uncle's devoted
assistant in the administration, "premier" she called him, a
young man near her own age, named Sullivan, who knew how
to address "the heart and judgement without misleading
* Bombay Quarterly Review, 196 (1857), as cited by Douglas, I, 432,

MES. DBAPEE 505

either". After that unguarded moment, life ran less smoothly
at Rajamundry, though there is no indication of open breach
between uncle and niece.

The letter to her cousin clearly foreshadowed Mrs.
Draper's return to England towards the close of 1774.
Henceforth her life was to be passed with her daughter
among relatives and friends at home. While in London she
occupied lodgings at "Mr. Woodhill's, Number 3 Queen
Anne Street "West, Cavendish Square",* within comfortable
reach of the Jameses and the Nunehams, among whom she
could hardly have failed to meet Mrs. Medalle, unless pre-
cautions were taken against it. Eclat was given to her re-
entrance into the old circles by the publication, early in
February, 1775, of ten letters which she had received from
Sterne at the height of his infatuation. Some mystery sur-
rounds the appearance of the little volume bearing the title
of Letters from YoricJc to Eliza, printed for G. Kearsley and
T. Evans. It was ushered in with a dedication to Lord
Apsley, then Lord High Chancellor, whose father, the old
Lord Bathurst, once introduced himself to Sterne at the
Princess of Wales's court and took him home to dine with him.
A preface by the publisher authenticated the letters, saying
that they had been faithfully copied with Mrs. Draper's per-
mission by a gentleman at Bombay. An editor told the public
who Eliza was, and commented upon "the tender friendship"
between her and Sterne. Though the letters may have been
procured in this way, it is more likely that Mrs. Draper
directly authorised the publication after her return to Lon-
don, and that she herself furnished copies of the originals and
the facts for her biographical sketch. What the preface said
of her, so far as it went, was accurate ; and except in capitals
and punctuation, the letters seem to have been in no way
tampered with; at any rate a comparison of the printed text
with the copy of the first letter, still extant in Mrs. Draper's
own hand, reveals no differences beyond these minor details.
Whatever may be one's opinion as to the propriety of the
publication during Mrs. Draper's lifetime, it was an honest
book; and Mrs. Draper is to be further commended for not
* Wilkes, List of Addresses,

506 LAURENCE STERNE

including in the volume the later letters from Sterne reflect-
ing upon the greed and violent temper of his wife, since dead.

As the Eliza of this remarkable series of letters, Mrs.
Draper received many attentions from Sterne's old friends,
who were curious to see the woman to whom Yorick sent his
sermons and Tristram Shandy, to whom he indited love
epistles on going out to breakfast, on returning from Lord
Bathurst's, or while waiting in Soho for Mr. James to dress.
They wanted to see, too, her replies from which Sterne quoted
a moral observation or two, expressing the opinion that her
part of the correspondence should be published. "When I
am in want of ready cash", he said, "and ill health will not
permit my genius to exert itself, I shall print your letters, as
finished essays, 'by an unfortunate Indian lady'. The style
is new ; and would almost be a sufficient recommendation for

their selling well, without merit but their sense, natural

ease, and spirit, is not to be equalled, I believe, in this section
of the globe; nor, I will answer for it, by any of your coun-
trywomen in yours." On the strength of this warm recom-
mendation of Mrs. Draper's epistolary style, her publisher
tried to flatter her into print as another Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu; but "her modesty was invincible to all the pub-
lisher's endeavours". "Altho' Mr. Sterne was partial to
every thing of her's", she invariably replied, good sense
triumphing over vanity, "she could not hope that the world
would be so too. ' ' Some letters had better be published post-
humously; and to this class belonged Mrs. Draper's. In lieu
of what she refused to give out to the public, the literary
forger, as might be expected, offered his wares. In April
appeared Letters from Eliza to Yorick, purporting to be cor-
rect copies of Mrs. Draper's letters to Sterne received "from
a lady, not more dignified by her rank in life, than elevated
by her understanding". The slight volume was entirely the
work of some unknown hack-writer.

Several well-known men were at once eager to win Mrs.
Draper's friendship. Wilkes, after introducing her to his
daughter, set out on Sterne's path to closer relations by send-
ing her a present of books, accompanied by praise of her wit
and conversation. In return, Mrs. Draper thanked him for

MRS. DEAPEE 607

the volumes, but deprecated the politician's flattery, the
intent of which she could not have failed to understand.
William Combe, the subsequent author of Dr. Syntax, was
also ambitious of standing in her favour, and long after-
wards boasted that she was more partial to him than she had
ever been to Sterne. But the nearest successor to Sterne was
the Abbe Raynal, who, since their meeting at Bombay, had
been in correspondence with Mrs. Draper and now associated
with her in England. Like Sterne, he extolled her beauty,
her candour, and sensibility, and imagined her the inspirer
of all his work. Losing self-control completely, the Abbe
proposed that she leave her family and friends and take up
her residence with him in France. "What joy did I not
expect", he wrote, "from seeing her sought after by men of
genius, and beloved by women of the most refined tastes."
Mrs. Draper valued the distinguished friendship; but if she
ever had any thought of quitting England for Paris, she was
prevented by illness and death.

After 1775, Mrs. Draper sinks from view. It is probable
that she lived in dignified retirement with her daughter
among relatives, despite the attempts to allure her into ques-
tionable friendships. She was surely a welcome visitor at
Hoddington, the seat of her cousin Thomas Mathew Sclater,
who had been her confidential correspondent since childhood.
And by some turn in her fortunes, over which one can only
idly speculate, she seems to have been taken under the pro-
tection of Sir William Draper, kinsman and perhaps brother
to her husband. This old warrior, who had fought with his
regiment by the side of Clive in India and led a successful
expedition against the Philippines, was then settled on the
Clifton Downs near Bristol. At his seat, named Manilla
Hall, after the city which he had captured, Mrs. Draper may
have passed her last years. Such at least is the conjecture
of local history.*

In any case, Mrs. Draper's residence at Clifton was brief.
The young woman whose oval face and brilliant eyes had
startled two ecclesiastics out of propriety, died on August 3,
1778, in the thirty-fifth year of her age. She was buried in

•George Pryce, A Popular Eistory of Bristol, 119 (Bristol, 1861).

508 LAURENCE STERNE

the cathedral at Bristol, where a diamond in the north aisle
of the choir marks her grave. Near-by in the north transept
was erected, two years after her death, a mural monument
by Bacon, the popular sculptor. The addition of a nave to
the cathedral a century later made it necessary to take down
all the monuments in the transepts. Mrs. Draper's was then
removed to the beautiful cloisters. From a plain base rises
a pointed arch of Sienna marble, under which stands, on each
side of a pedestal supporting an urn, two draped female
figures of white marble in alto relievo; of which the one,
holding a torch in her right hand, is looking away and up-
ward, while the eyes of the other are cast down towards a
basket in her left hand containing a pelican feeding her
young. Across and over the urn, above and between the two
figures, lies an exquisitely carved wreath. An inscription,
interpreting the allegory, says that in Mrs. Draper were
united "Genius and Benevolence".*

The three men who had professed admiration for Mrs.
Draper took notice of her death, each in his own characteristic
way. "Wilkes bluntly wrote the word dead after her name
in his address-book, else he might forget it. Combe, the liter-
ary hack, traded upon her name by bringing out the next
year two volumes of Letters Supposed to have been Written
by Yorich and Eliza. The fictitious correspondence, cleverly
enough framed, began with Mrs. Draper's return to India
in 1767, and closed with a farewell letter from Sterne just
as death was impending. Raynal opened his History of the
Indies, which was then passing to a second edition, and
inserted a mad eulogy upon Eliza, from which I have quoted
the soberer passages. "Territory of Anjengo", he exclaimed,
addressing the land of her birth, "in thyself thou art noth-
ing! But thou hast given birth to Eliza. A day will come
when the emporiums founded by Europeans upon Asiatic
shores will exist no more. * * * The grass will cover them,
or the Indian, avenged at last, will build upon their ruins.
But if my works be destined to endure, the name of Anjengo
will dwell in the memories of men. Those who read me, those

* J. Britton, History of the Cathedral Church of Bristol, 63 (London,
1830) ; Pryce, A Popular History of Bristol, as above.

MRS. DRAPER 509

whom the winds shall drive to these shores, will say, 'There
was the birth place of Eliza Draper.' " To the influence of
the happy climate of Anjengo were attributed the personal
charms of Mrs. Draper, which even the gloomy skies of Eng-
land could not obscure. "A statuary", said the Abbe, "who
would have wished to represent Voluptuousness, would have
taken her for his model; and she would equally have served
for him who might have had a figure of Modesty to portray.
* * * In every thing that Eliza did, an irresistible charm
was diffused around her. Desire, but of a timid and bashful
cast, followed her steps in silence. Only a man of honour
would have dared to love her, but he would not have dared
to avow his passion. * * * In her last moments, Eliza's
thoughts were fixed upon her friend; and I cannot write a
line without having before me the memorial she has left me.
Oh ! that she could also have endowed my pen with her graces
and her virtue !"* If these concluding sentences may be read
literally, Kaynal received a letter from Mrs. Draper just
before her death. Not long after this he visited Bristol with
Burke. It is just a surmise, if nothing more, that he placed
in the cathedral the monument to Mrs. Draper's memory.

Anjengo was again apostrophised by James Forbes in his
Oriental Memoirs; and to the various places where Mrs.
Draper lived while in India, travellers long made pilgrim-
ages. Colonel James "Welsh of the Madras infantry visited
the house at Anjengo where she was supposed to be born, and
carried away from a broken window pieces of oyster-shell
and mother-of-pearl as mementos. He took pains to write
also in his Reminiscences that the house she lived in at
Tellicherry was still standing in 1812. A tree on the estate
of her uncle at Masulipatam was called, it is said, Eliza's tree,
in memory of her sojourn there after the flight from her
husband. But a more interesting as well as more accessible
shrine was the scene of her elopement overlooking the har-
bour of Bombay. Sketches of Belvidere House were brought
to England by J. B. Fraser, the traveller and explorer; and
from them Eobert Burford painted a panorama for public
exhibition in London. Those who were unable to make the
* For the complete eulogy, see the ffistovre PHlosopMque, II, 85-89.

510 LAURENCE STEBNE

voyage to India might thus imagine the window from which
Mrs. Draper descended to the ship of Sir John Clark, and
hear the story that many a person had seen her ghost o 'nights
flitting about the corridors and verandahs of Belvidere in
hoop and farthingale.*

At the same time Gothic fancy built up a pretty legend
round the prebendal house which Sterne sometimes occupied
at York. The humourist wrote, they used to say, Tristram
Shandy in the parlour below, and slept above in a large "old
fashioned room, with furniture coeval with its form, heavy
and dark and calculated to excite every association favourable
to the abode of spirits dark as Erebus". For a full quarter-
century after his death, Sterne's ghost had the habit of
revisiting the old bedroom every night just as the bell in the
great minster tolled twelve, and of tapping thrice the fore-
head of any one who might be sleeping there. The actor
Charles Mathews, who took the lodgings while playing at
York, because they were cheap, found Sterne's visitations in
no wise troublesome, and at length laid the perturbed spirit, t

* Douglas, Bombay and Western India, I, 177, 403, 418. A vignette
of the view of Belvidere was made for the Mirror of Literature, Amuse-
ment, and Instruction, July 9, 1831.

t Memoirs of Mathews, I, 247-55.

CONCLUSION

More than a century has rolled by since Sterne's ghost
last walked his chambers in Stonegate ; but even yet one may
feel the spell which the charming Yorick once cast over his
contemporaries, who were loth to let him die ; who, long after
he was dead and gone, imitated him in their books and cor-
respondence, who sometimes forged his name to letters and
whimsical impromptus such as they imagined he might have
written, and kept on relating anecdotes of him, as if he were
still living. Few or none who knew Sterne well, from his valet
to his archbishop and the men of fashion who crowded round
him in his lodgings or at St. James's, and gave him the place
of honour at their tables, ever broke friendship with him.
Johnson, it is true, refused his company and thundered against
"that man Sterne", but Johnson had really no acquaintance
with him or with his books. If Warburton in a passion called
Sterne "a scoundrel", it was after Sterne had told the Bishop
of Gloucester that he could not accept him as guide and pat-
tern in literature and conduct, without suppressing such
talents as God had endowed him with. On the other hand,
Lord Bathurst took Sterne under his protection as the wit
that most reminded him of the glorious age of Queen Anne.
Lord Spencer invited him to his country-seat, filled his purse
with guineas, and was ever pressing him to delay his journey
into Yorkshire. A box was always reserved for him and his
company at both the theatres. Garrick took him home, dined
him, and introduced him to "numbers of great people";
while Mrs. Garrick, delighted with the new guest, told him to
regard their house as his own, to come and go whenever he
pleased. Suard, though he associated with Sterne for only a
few months, carried the image of him down to death. "Whenever
in after years Yorick 's name was mentioned, Suard 's eyes
brightened, and he began to relate anecdotes about the

511

512 LAURENCE STERNE

Chevalier Sterne as he appeared in the salons, imitating, as
he did so, his voice, manners, and gestures.

Lessing's famous remark that he stood ready to shorten
his own life could he thereby prolong Yorick's, would seem
to be not quite sincere, had it not been several times repeated
by the dramatist; for the two men never met. But Sterne's
contemporaries made no distinction between Mr. Tristram
Shandy and the book bearing his name. "Know the one",
they used to say, "and you know the other." It has been
reserved mostly for professional critics of later times to take
Sterne to task for his slovenly style, for slang and solecisms,
and for a loose syntax which drifts into the chaos of stars
and dashes. Such criticism never occurred to those who
knew him or could imagine him. "Whether speaking or writ-
ing, Sterne might be heedless of conventional syntax ; but he
was always perfectly clear. His dashes and stars were not
mere tricks to puzzle the reader; they stood for real pauses
and suppressions in a narrative which aimed to reproduce
the illusion of his natural speech, with all its easy flow,
warmth, and colour. To read Sterne was for those in the
secret like "listening to him. Lessing, who was able to divine
the author from his books, paid him as fine a compliment as
was ever paid to genius.

Sterne's personality, like a great actor's, loses perforce its
brilliancy in the pale reflection of a biography, wherein traits
of manner and character are obscured by numberless facts,
dates, and minor details necessary to a true relation of the
humourist's career, but most difficult to carry in the memory
and thereafter combine into a living portrait. No biographer,
though the spell may be upon him, can hope to make it quite
clear why Sterne captivated the world that came within his
influence. His wit, humour, and pathos, which exactly hit
the temper of his age, seem a little antiquated now as we
derive these qualities second-hand from the books which he
left behind him, and from the numerous anecdotes which
were related after him, all rewrought for literary effect.
Indeed, only a few of his letters retain their original fresh-
ness, for in most cases their phrases have been all smoothed
out by editors and biographers. We may look upon the

CONCLUSION 513

wonderful portraits that were painted of him by Reynolds
and Gainsborough, and observe his dress, figure, features, and
bright, eager eyes; but we must add from our imagination
the smile and the voice of the king's jester. Moreover, man-
ners and morals have so completely changed since Sterne's
day, that one is in danger of misjudging him. No ecclesiastic
could now live the life that was lived by Sterne. He and
his compeers would be promptly unfrocked. The scenes
through which Sterne passed, the men and women with whom
he associated, and the jests over which they laughed, have
long since become impossible in smart society. Thackeray,
who knew more of other men surrounding the Georges than
he knew specifically of Sterne, made his confession when he
said, after reading the letters of Selwyn and "Walpole: "I
am scared as I look round at this society — at this King, at
these courtiers, at these politicians, at these bishops — at this
flaunting vice and levity; * * * wits and prodigals; some
persevering in their bad ways : some repentant, but relapsing ;
beautiful ladies, parasites, humble chaplains, led captains."
In more complaisant mood Thackeray nevertheless felt the
fascination of it all. "I should like to have seen", he then
confessed, "the Folly. It was a splendid, embroidered, be-
ruffled, snuff -boxed, red-heeled, impertinent Folly, and knew
how to make itself respected." In this old world of the
Georges, where the cardinal virtues were all forgotten, Sterne
reigned as the supreme jester.

When Sterne first came to London in triumph, he was far
from being the awkward country parson, lean, lank, and pale,
that later caricature has represented him. He was a man
hardly beyond the prime of life, of slight figure, near six feet
in height, of rather prominent nose, with cheeks and lips
still retaining traces of youthful colour and fullness, — and
eyes soft and gentle as a woman's when they were in repose,
but dark and brilliant when his spirit was stirred by con-
versation and repartee. In bearing he was from the first
supple and courteous to an extraordinary degree. His oddi-
ties, which friends watched and commented upon, but never
described, seem to have consisted in a drollery of face and
voice when he paid a compliment or related a jest, combined,

33

514 LAURENCE STERNE

if under the excitement of burgundy and good fellowship,
with droll movements of head and arms extending to the
whole body, not at all ungraceful, one may be sure, but odd
and peculiar, like Corporal Trim's. Then it was that his
wonderful eyes took on their wild gleam.

This is all as it should be, for Sterne was a gentleman who
had always chosen his companions among gentlemen. He
belonged to an old and honourable family, whose men, some-
times possessing solid attainments, were commonly hasty of
temper; whose women were alert and vivacious. His father,
"a little smart man", inheriting the characteristics of the
Sternes and Rawdons, was withal "of a kindly, sweet dis-
position, void of all design". Out of pity for the sad state
of a woman beneath him in rank, the poor ensign married
her, said the son, quarrelled with a fellow officer over a goose,
and was straightway run through the body ; but survived after
a fashion, and followed his flag to the West Indies and to death
of a fever. In thus describing his father, Laurence described
his own temperament. Like his father, he showed himself
lacking in that prudence and good sense necessary for getting
on with grave people. He quarrelled with the one man who
could make or unmake him at will. If not literally run
through the body like his father before him, he received his
quietus for the present. But time has its revenges. Sterne
wrote his book; and within three months Mr. Tristram
Shandy was as widely known throughout England as the
Prime Minister who accepted the dedication. Thenceforth
Sterne lived in the glare of the world. Blinded at first by
the excess of light, he despatched letters down to York every
day, saying that no man had ever been so honoured by the
great. No less than ten noblemen called at his lodgings on a
single morning. Garrick came; Hogarth came; Reynolds
came. The bishops all sent in their compliments; Rocking-
ham took him to Court ; and Yorick was soon dining with the
ladies of her Majesty's bedchamber. The jests and anecdotes
with which he everywhere set tables on a roar were passed
on to the coffee-houses, and thence through newsmongers to
the world at large. And wherever the tall man in black went
— and no doors were closed against him, — he was as much at

CONCLUSION 515

home as when in his country parish, driving his cattle afield
or running down a goose for his friend Mr. Blake of York.

Such was Sterne's career in its abridgment. I have often
thought, in following it, of a remark that George Eliot once
made of Kousseau and her other wayward literary passions.
"I wish you thoroughly to understand", she declared to a
friend, "that the writers who have most profoundly influenced
me * * * are not in the least oracles to me. It is just pos-
sible that I may not embrace one of their opinions, — that
I may wish my life to be shaped quite differently from
theirs." Still she read on and on in Eousseau and the rest,
under the, irresistible sway of emotions and perceptions novel
to all her previous experiences. So it is with Sterne. It
seemed to his contemporaries, as it seems to us, that no man
ever possessed so keen a zest for living. You see this in his
early life, in his preaching, in his reading, in his pastimes,
and even in his farming. Write to me, he entreated a cor-
respondent after returning home from his first campaign in
town, and your letter "will find me either pruning, or dig-
ging, or trenching, or weeding, or hacking up old roots, or
wheeling away rubbish". You see this zest in its startling
fullness after the Yorkshire parson had begun his long and
steady tramp through the rounds of pleasure in London,
Bath, Paris, and Italy. "When his course was finished, he
had exhausted all pleasurable sensations, those of the peasant
as well as those of the great world. If there were times
when melancholy and despondency crept over him, he wisely
kept within his lodgings or at Shandy Hall away from
friends, and fought out single-handed the battle with evil
spirits.

In the background of Sterne's character thus lay, as
Bagehot once pointed out, a calm pagan philosophy. Al-
though he well knew that he was sacrificing his life to plea-
sure, he never halted or swerved from the path on which he
had set out ; for he felt that he was but fulfilling his destiny.
To the physicians who told him that he could not continue in
his course another month, he replied that he had heard the
same story for thirteen years. When the dreadful hemor-
rhages, so numerous that we cannot count them, fell upon

516 LAURENCE STERNE

him, he accepted them without murmur, as the darkness which
nature interposes between periods of light. And when he
saw the approach of the "all-composing" night from which
he knew no dawn would appear, he merely remarked that he
should like "another seven or eight months, * * * but be
that as it pleases God". It was doubtless this cheerful readi-
ness of Sterne to take all that nature gives, down to the last
* struggle, that Goethe had in mind when he said that Sterne
was the finest type of wit whose presence had ever been felt
in literature.

A pagan in so far as he had any philosophy, Sterne was
endowed with none of the grave virtues or contemptible vices
described by moralists. If you run through the list of them
as laid down by Aristotle or by Dante, you may stop a moment
upon this or that virtue or upon this or that vice, but you
quickly pass on to the end, with the perception that none
pertains greatly to this man's character. Indeed, for certain
of the practical virtues, Sterne expressed the most profound
contempt, classing them with the deadliest of the seven deadly
sins. Caution and Discretion, for example— the virtues of
Samuel Richardson and his heroines — were to Sterne only the
evil propensities of human nature, inasmuch as they are
always intruding upon a man's conduct to prevent the free
and spontaneous expression of his real selfhood. "They
encompass", he often said in varying phrase, "the heart with
adamant." Such virtues and such vices as Sterne possessed
are rather comprehended in the ideal of old English knight-
hood as modified by the spirit of the Eenaissance. The
virtues of the gentleman in those times were, according to
Chaucer, —

"Truth and honour, freedom (generosity) and courtesy."
And all his vices, lying under the pretty concealment of the
most perfect manners, were of the flesh only.

Sterne could always be relied upon to perform with
fidelity all ecclesiastical offices with which he was charged
by his archbishop or by his dean and chapter. "When absent
from Sutton or Coxwold, he was careful to place over them
capable curates, and to see to it that his surrogates made
annual visitations to those other parishes lying within the

CONCLUSION 517

jurisdiction of Ms commissaryships. In all his engagements
and appointments, he strove to he punctual to the hour,
whether they were for husiness or for relaxation ; and if ill-
ness or other circumstance intervened to keep him at home,
he sent a note of apology so courteous in its phrasing that the
receiver placed it aside among his treasures. So it was in the
obscure days at Sutton and so it was after Sterne had entered
the world of fashion. It must have been quite worth while
for Lord Spencer to have presented him with a silver standish
merely for the sake of the acknowledgment wherein Sterne
blessed him in the name of himself, wife, and daughter, say-
ing that "when the Fates, or Follies of the Shandean family
have melted down every ounce of silver belonging to it, * * *
this shall go last to the Mint".* If Sterne made any remark
at dinner in the license of his wit which he thought might
hurt the feelings of the host or of a sensitive guest, he ap-
peared the next morning with a graceful apology, or sent a
messenger with a note laying it all to the burgundy and ask-
ing that no offence be taken where none was intended. Sterne
was kindly and generous to all who depended upon him. His
contracts with the poor and obscure men whom he left in
charge of his parishes show a consideration uncommon in
those days, when pluralists were accustomed to grind and
otherwise misuse their curates. Sometimes he gave a curate
the whole value of a living. The persisting opinion that he
long neglected his mother, we now know, is quite untrue.
Furthermore, Sterne was always most attentive to the welfare
of his wife and daughter, for whose health and ease he pro-
vided to the full extent of his purse. Six months before his
death, he set in order his letters and stray papers, that they
might be published for their benefit; and his last thoughts,
as he lay dying, were upon Lydia.

Strangely enough, Sterne has been depicted as a hypo-
crite, as a Joseph Surface, thoroughly corrupt in his heart,

* Sterne was especially pleased with the inscription which the
standish bore: —

"Laurentio Sterne A.M.
Joannes Comes Spencer
Musas, Charitasque omnes
propitias preeatur"' Morgan Manuscripts

518 LAUBENCE STEENE

but posing as a moralist or a man of fine sentiments. No
portrait could be further from the truth, for Sterne never
pretended to be other than he was. Such qualities as nature
gave him. — whether they be called virtues or whether they be
called vices — he wore upon his sleeve. If he felt no -zeal for
a cause, he never professed to have any. For a brief period
he joined with his Church in denunciation of the Stuart Pre-
tender and the Jesuits who were seeking restoration in Eng-
land, but his passions soon cooled; he became disgusted with
the part which he was playing, and resolved "that if ever
the army of martyrs was to be augmented or a new one raised
— I would have no hand in it, one way or t'other". Rather
than be suffocated, "I would almost subscribe", he added,
"to anything which does not choke me on the first passage".
In all this Sterne was perfectly sincere. Moreover, he be-
lieved the gospel as he preached it. He accepted his Church
and all that it taught without question, not because he had
meditated profoundly upon its doctrines, but because it was
the Church of his ancestors in which he had grown up from
childhood. To him the Bible was the most eloquent of books
because it was inspired ; and for the same reason the men and
women therein portrayed were types of men and women of all
times. When he set up a defence of miracles, taking Heze-
kiah for his theme, before the Parisian philosophers gathered
at the English embassy, it was because he actually believed
that the shadow went back ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz,
certainly not because he wished to appear odd and facetious
Any other inference would be to misunderstand completely
the Yorkshire parson.

In contrast with intellects so highly cultivated as Hol-
bach's or Diderot's, Sterne was ludicrously weak in the rea-
soning faculty and in that poise of character which comes
from it. Locke was the only philosopher whom he could
understand; all others were charlatans who poured forth
words without meaning. His sermons, always graceful and
sometimes entertaining, display no logic, with the possible
exception of the one which Voltaire praised for its subtile
analysis of conscience. And even in that sermon, Sterne's
discernments concern not so much the intellect as the feelings

CONCLUSION 519

which lead conscience astray. "Reason", Sterne once said,
"is half of it sense", and he thereby described himself. For
his was a most abnormal personality. Exceedingly sensitive J
to pleasure and to pain, he gave way to the emotions of the
moment, receiving no guidance from reason, for he had none.
Himself aware of this, he said variously, "I generally act
from the first impulse" or "according as the fly stings".
Had Sterne's heart been bad, he would have been a menace
to society ; but his heart was not bad. I can discern in him
nothing mean or cowardly — Thackeray to the contrary not-
withstanding. On the other hand, he was always courteous,
generous, and unselfish. Men who came within his circle
watched him, as we have watched him, amused rather than
shocked, to see him, oblivious of all conventions, follow his
momentary impulses into the wild follies and extravagances
of high life. Only the grave shook their heads. To all others
Sterne was a delightful absurdity.

Sterne's want of self-control was nowhere more con-
spicuous than in his relations with women. Feminine beauty
simply overpowered him. First came Miss Lumley, whom he
married because she was the first; and then followed in his ,
later days Miss Fourmantelle, "my witty widow Mrs. Fergu-
son", Mrs. Vesey with her blue stockings, Lady Percy, and
Mrs. Draper home from India without her husband, to men-
tion a few names that have survived in these memoirs. The ;
women who awakened his admiration, Sterne divided into
three classes, discovering their types in Venus, Minerva, and
Juno. None of the three goddesses, however, quite satisfied
his ideal; for Venus, lovely as she was, had no wit; Minerva
had wit, but she was inclined to be a prude ; and Juno, for all
her beauty, was too imperial. Venus he liked to look at as
she whipped up to his carriage in Hyde Park and invited
him to her cabinet for a dish of tea. Minerva and Juno,
whom he saw in Mrs. Garrick and Mrs. James, he adored
with bent knee from a safe distance, whence incense might be
cast upon their altars. But when Venus and Minerva
appeared in one woman, at once beautiful, witty, and viva-
cious, his poor heart utterly collapsed.

About women of this last type Sterne liked to dawdle,

520 LATJKESTCE 8TEENE

exchanging tender sentiments; he liked, no doubt, — as we
read in the Sentimental Journey — to touch the tips of their
fingers and to count their pulse beats, all for the pleasurable
sensations which he felt running along his nerves. In return,
these sentimental women were enraptured; sometimes they
came north during the summer to meet him at York and to
be chaperoned by him, as he called it, to Scarborough for a
week or a fortnight. The infatuation, except perhaps in the
case of Mrs. Draper, was never a deep passion ; it was only a
transient emotional state, which quickly passed unless re-
newed by another sight of the charming face and figure.
"We are all born", said Sterne as we have before quoted him,
"with passions which ebb and flow (else they would play the
devil with us) to new objects." The Anglican clergyman,
remarked a Frenchman who observed his behaviour in Paris,
was in love with the whole sex, and thereby preserved his
purity. That may be quite true. • Certainly it would be
unjust to charge Sterne with gross immoralities, for there was
nothing of the beast about the sublimated Yorick. His sins
may have been only those sins of the imagination which fre-
quently accompany a wasting disease; for we should not
forget that Sterne had the phthisical temperament. Perhaps
Coleridge correctly divined him when he said that Sterne
resembled a child who just touches a hot teapot with trem-
bling fingers because it has been forbidden him. And yet he
lived in a society where the seventh commandment was most
inconvenient and where no discredit fell upon a man if he
broke it.

Of course I am entering no defence in behalf of Sterne's
conduct. I am merely explaining it from his volatile disposi-
tion. Nor would it serve any purpose to censure him for his
follies and indiscretions. True, one is amazed at the freedoms
of the old society. And were it not for Sterne's humour, the
man and his books would have become long since intolerable.
But the everlasting humour of the man saves him ; it lifts him
out of the world of moral conventions into a world of his own
making. "We must accept him as he was, else close the book.
Everything about him was unique — his appearance, what he
did, what he said, what he wrote. Acts for which you would

CONCLUSION 521

reproach yourself or your nearest friends, you pass over in his
ease, for in them lurks some overmastering absurdity. "I
am a queer dog", he wrote in reply to an unknown cor-
respondent who conjectured that he must be one when over

his cups, "I am a queer dog, only you must not wait for

my being so till supper, much less an hour after, for I

am so before breakfast."* No one could ever predict what
Sterne would do under given circumstances. "When in com-
pany, he sometimes sat the melancholy Jaques ; at other times,
he flashed forth a wild jest; and if it took well, then came
another and another still wilder. There is the same wildness
in Tristram Shandy, which opens with a jest, runs into
buffoonery, and closes with a cock-and-bull story. But
Sterne's humour was often, as in the Sentimental Journey,
quiet and elusive. If a fly buzzed about his nose, he must
catch it and safely carry it in his hand to the window and let
it go free. If he saw a donkey munching an artichoke, he
must give him a macaroon, just to watch the changes in the
animal's countenance as he drops a bitter morsel for a sweet
one. Governed by his whims in small and great things, Sterne
was thoroughly unstable in his character.

As we view him in his books and in his life, Sterne had
brief serious moods, but he quickly passed out of them into
his humour. "When he advised a brother of the cloth "to tell
a lie to save a lie", he did not exactly mean it so, but he could
not resist the humour of the absurd injunction. He must
have been sorely troubled over his wife's insanity, but he
could not announce her illness without awakening a smile in
the hearer as he said: "Madame fancies herself the Queen of
Bohemia and I am indulging her in the notion. Every day
I drive her through my stubble field, with bladders fastened
to the wheels of her chaise to make a noise, and then I tell
her this is the way they course in Bohemia."

Nothing, however sacred, was immune against Sterne's
wit. He was, if one wishes to put it that way, indecent and
profane. And yet indecency or profanity never appears in
his letters and books by itself or for its own sake. His
loosest jests not only have their humorous point, but they

* Morgan Manuscripts.

522 LAURENCE STEBNE

often cut rather deeply into human nature. He had, as we
have said, very little of the animal in him; and perhaps for
this very reason, in the opinion of Mr. Theodore Watts-
Dunton, he was amused by certain physical instincts and
natural functions of the body when contrasted with the higher
nature to which all lay claim. His imagination was ever
playing with these inconsistences, and down they went without
premeditation, as might be easily illustrated from the con-
versations at Shandy Hall. Queer analogies of all sorts were
ever running in Sterne's head. If it were a hot day, he
thought of Nebuchadnezzar's oven. If he took a text from
Solomon, he could not help questioning its truth on rising
into the pulpit, for the antithesis between the wise man of the
Hebrews and a York prebendary was too good to lose. He
has been charged with parodies of St. Paul's greetings to the
Corinthians. Of this he was, indeed, guilty on several occa-
sions, but only when writing to a company of wits who spent
their leisure in reading Rabelais and literature of that kind.
The contrast between the little church that St. Paul founded
at Corinth and a group of jesters that met under the roof of
Hall-Stevenson could uot be resisted. It must be sent to the
Demoniacs for their amusement.

Sterne is, I dare say, the most complete example in mod-
ern literature of a man whose other faculties are overpowered
by a sense of humour. He feels, he imagines, and he at once
perceives the incongruities of things as ordered by man or
by nature ; but he does not think, nor has he any appreciation
of moral values. What to others seems serious or sacred is to
him only an occasion for a sally of wit. In a measure all
great humourists since Aristophanes and Lucian have resem-
bled him, for unrestrained utterance is essential to humour.
The humourist is a free lance recognising no barriers to his

wit. All that his race most prizes its religion, its social

ideals, its traditions, its history, and its heroes — is fair game
for him, just as much as the most trivial act of everyday
life. He is, as Torick named himself, the king's jester,
privileged to break in at all times upon the feast with his odd
ridicule. But most humourists have had their moods of high
seriousness, when they have turned from the gay to the grave

CONCLUSION 523

aspects of things. In Don Quixote there is so much tragedy
behind the farce that Charles Kingsley thought it the saddest
book ever written. Shakespeare passed from Falstaff and
the blackguards that supped at the Boar's Head to Hamlet,
Lear, and Othello. Fielding, in the midst of his comedy, had a
way of letting one into a deeper self, as in that great passage
where he cuts short an exaggerated description of Sophia's
charms with the remark — "but most of all she resembled one
whose image can never depart from my breast," — in allusion
to his wife just dead. To all these men there was something
besides the humourist. There were in reserve for them great
moral and intellectual forces. However far they may have
been carried by their humour, there was at some point a quick
recovery of the normal selfhood. Sterne had no such reserve
powers, for he was compounded of sensations only. In his
life and in his books, he added extravagance to extravagance,
running the course to the end, for there was no force to check
and turn him backward. He was a humourist pure and sim-
ple, and nothing else. The modern world has not seen his
like. The ancients — though I do not pretend to speak with
authority — may have had such a humourist in Lucian. But
there is a difference in the quality of their humour. Lucian
was sharp and acidulous. Sterne rarely, perhaps nowhere
except in the sketch of Dr. Slop, reached the border where
humour passes into satire; for satire means a degree of
seriousness unknown to him. With Swift, Sterne said vivo, la
bagatelle; but he added — what Swift could never say — vive
la joie, declaring the joy of life to be "the first of human
possessions. ' '

APPENDIX

MANUSCRIPTS

No account of the Sterne manuscripts now existing can lay
claim to completeness, for they lie scattered in many collec-
tions. The following lists comprise mostly such as have been
employed in the preparation of this book, though it has
seemed best to admit reference to certain manuscripts which
can not be exactly placed at the present time, and are thus
unknown to the writer from personal inspection :

Sentimental Journey. (British Museum, Egerton MSS
1610.) The printer's copy, with autograph corrections, of the
first vol. of the Sentimental Journey. 174 pages. Small
quarto, measuring 6 by 8 inches. The manuscript is accom-
panied by a letter giving its history. Sterne's alterations are
numerous.

Sermons. The manuscript of the sermon on the "Tem-
poral Advantage^ of Religion" formed a part of the collection
of the late Frederick Locker-Lampson. It is now owned by
W. K. Bixby, Esq., of St. Louis. It is inclosed in a wrapper
addressed to Rev. Dr. Clarke and bearing the autograph of
Henry Fauntleroy, the banker. The manuscript of the ser-
mon on "Penances" was recently acquired by J. Pierpont
Morgan, Esq. It has the following endorsement near the
end: "Preached April 8th 1750. Present, Dr. Herring, Dr.
Wanly, Mr. Berdmore."

Tristram Shandy. A copy of book IV, chs. 1-17, with
corrections in Sterne's own hand, was at Skelton Castle in
1859. The copy was probably made by Lydia Sterne, who
was at times her father's amanuensis (Notes and Queries,
second series, Vtl, 15). The story of Le Fever in book VI,
down to "As this letter came to hand" in the thirteenth chap-
ter, was long preserved at Spencer House, St. James's Place,

524

APPENDIX 525

London. Over the manuscript Lord Spencer wrote, "The
Story of Le Fever, sent to me by Sterne before it was pub-
lished" (Appendix to Second Report of the Historical Manu-
scripts Commission, 20 (London, 1871). It was sold by the
present Lord Spencer.

The Journal to Eliza. (British Museum, Additional MSS,
34527, ff. 1-40.) The first entry is dated Aprl. 13, [1767],
and the last (a postscript) Nov. 1 [1767]. The Journal forms
a part of the MSS bequeathed to the Museum by the late
Thomas Washbourne Gibbs of Bath. The Gibbs MSS include
also the draft of a letter from Sterne to Daniel Draper (sum-
mer of 1767) ; two letters with their original covers to Mr. and
Mrs. James, dated respectively Coxwould, May 10, 1767, and
York, Dec. 28, 1767; a long letter to Mrs. James from Mrs.
Draper, dated Bombay, Apr. 15, 1772 (ff. 47-70) ; and two
letters from Thackeray to T. W. Gibbs, relative to the Journal,
dated May 31 and Sept. 12, [1852].

Miscellaneous Letters in the British Museum:

Letter to Francis Blackburne, Archdeacon of Cleveland.
Sutton, Nov. 3, 1750. Four pages, folio. Address on back.
(Egerton MSS 2325, f. 1.)

Dr. Jaques Sterne to Archdeacon Blackburne with refer-
ence to Laurence. York, Dec. 6, 1750. Four pages, quarto.
(Egerton MSS 2325, f. 3.)

Letter to Dr. Jaques Sterne. [Sutton.] April 5, 1751.
Eleven pages, folio. (Additional MSS 25479, f. 12.)

This letter, which is not in Sterne's hand, is accompanied
by the following note: "Copied by permission of Mr. Bob.
Cole of Upper Norton Street from a copy carefully made by
some person for Mr. Godfrey Bosvile formerly of Gunthwaite
and bought by Mr. Cole with many other papers of the Bos-
viles, July 25, 1851."

Letter to Becket. Paris. [April?] 12, 1762. Three
pages, quarto. (Egerton MSS 1662, f. 5.)

Letter to Becket. Bagneres-de-Bigorre, July 15, 1763;
with seal. Four pages, quarto, written on two; address on
back. (Additional MSS 21508, f. 47.)

526 LAURENCE STEENE

Letter to Panchaud and Foley, Bankers, at Paris. London,
Feb. 27, 1767. Four pages, quarto, written on one page ; ad-
dress on back. (Additional MSS 33964, f. 381.)

Letters in the Morgan Collection. A part of the Letter-
Book in which Sterne was accustomed to copy his own letters
as well as those from his friends, is owned by J. Pierpont
Morgan, Esq. Fifty-nine pages of writing on 34 leaves,
measuring 7%x6i4 inches. With a view to the publication
of his correspondence after his death, Sterne states on the
first page, for the information of his survivors, where other
letters may be found. See p. 473 of this biography. Seven-
teen letters and a fragment, of which five have been published
in mutilated form. They comprise the following:

Letter dated York, Jan. 1, 1760, to a friend on the inde-
corums of Tristram Shandy. Published.

Letter to Richard Berenger, gentleman of horse to George
III. [March, 1760.] Published.

Letter written at York, apparently just after his return
from France in June, 1764, to a lady in town. Unpublished.

Letter to Mrs. F , of Bath, — probably Mrs. Ferguson.

In this letter Sterne describes his personal appearance, saying
that he is "near six feet high". Date uncertain. Un-
published.

Letter to Miss M. Macartney, — that is, Miss Mary Macart-
ney, afterwards Lady Lyttelton, wife of William Henry
Lyttelton, Governor of South Carolina. Undated, but belong-
ing to the summer of 1760. Unpublished.

Letter to "My dear Bramine", i.e., Mrs. Draper, dated
June or July [1767]. Unpublished.

Letter from Hall-Stevenson. Crazy Castle, July 13, 1766.
Unpublished.

Reply to Hall-Stevenson. Coxwould, July 15, 1766. Un-
published.

Letter from Ignatius Sancho. July 21, 1766. Published.

Reply to Sancho. Coxwould, July 27, 1766. Published.

Letter from a Mr. Brown of Geneva to Hall-Stevenson, on
Tristram Shandy and the kind of man its author must be.
July 25, 1760. Unpublished.

APPENDIX 527

Sterne's humorous reply to Mr. Brown. York, Sept. 9,
1760. Unpublished.

A Letter signed "Jenny Shandy", claiming to be "poor
Mr. Shandy's sister". Unpublished.

Letter to Mrs. Elizabeth Vesey, London, June 20, [1764].
Published.

Letter to Lord Spencer, thanking him for a silver standish.
Coxwould, Oct. 1, 1765. Unpublished.

Letter to Miss T ; i.e., Miss Tuting, who was going

abroad. Coxwould, Aug. 27, 1764. Unpublished.

Letter to a Friend in Paris. Bond Street, London, Jan. 6,
1767. Unpublished.

Fragment of a Letter. Twelve lines. Unpublished.

Letters to the Kev. John Blake, master of the grammar
school at York. Twelve or more letters written on foolscap
(7:|4xl2i4 inches), and formerly belonging to Mr. A. H.
Hudson of York. Eleven of these letters were published by
Mr. Percy Fitzgerald in his Life of Sterne. The original of
one not included by him is now in the library of Mr. W. K.
Bixby of St. Louis. The manuscript of one is owned by
Mr. A. H. Joline, New York City; and of another by Messrs.
Charles Scribner's Sons. Still another was formerly in the
collection of Mr. George T. Maxwell, New York City.

Four letters from Sterne to Lord Fauconberg. In the
library of Sir George Wombwell, Newburgh Priory, York-
shire. Dated respectively Paris, April 10, 1762 ; Montpellier,
Sept. 30, 1763; London, Friday [Jan. 9], 1767; and Bond
Street [London], Jan. 16, 1767.

Three Letters in the Alfred Morrison Collection, London.
Two to Beeket, dated respectively Toulouse, March. 12, 1763,
and Paris, March 20, 1764 ; and one to Panchaud, his banker
at Paris, dated Florence, Dec. 18, 1765.

Single Letters in Private Collections :

Letter to Mr. Mills, merchant, Philpot Lane, London.
Montpellier, Nov. 24, 1763. In the Huth Library, London.
See Catalogue of the Huth Library, V, 1705 (London, 1880).

528 LAURENCE STEBNE

Letter to Garriek, requesting the loan of £20. [London,
Jan., 1762.] In the library of Mr. A. H. Joline, New York
City.

Letter to Dr. Jemm of Paris, introducing Mr. Symonds,
and giving details of his winter in Italy. Eome, Easter Sun-
day, [1766]. Two pages, quarto 9%x7% inches. Contained
in the Great Album of Frederick Locker-Lampson, now owned
by Dodd, Mead and Co., New York City (1908). Dr. Jemm
may be identified perhaps with Dr. Alexandre Auguste
Jamme, of Toulouse, then a well-known physician and man
of letters, whom Sterne had probably met at Toulouse. He
resided partly at Paris. Mr. Symonds seems to be the John
Symonds, Esq., who subscribed to Sterne's Sermons of this
year ; not unlikely the John Symonds who succeeded Gray as
Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.

Letter to Mr. Hesselridge at Lord Maynard's, with refer-
ence to the last volumes of Tristram Shandy and to the forth-
coming sermons. York, July 5, [1765]. Two and one half
pages, quarto 9%x7% inches. Owned by Henry Sotheran
and Co., London (1906). See p. 349.

Letter to Becket. Paris, Oct. 19, 1765. Two pages,
quarto. Formerly owned by Kobson and Co. London (1904).

Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Draper (nee Sclater), mostly
from India to members of her family in England. In Lord
Basing 's collection at Hoddington House, Odiham, Hants.
Foolscap or large quarto, — paper sometimes red outside and
buff inside. These letters, arranged chronologically, though
they do not appear so in the MSS, comprise the following:

Elizabeth Sclater to her cousin, Miss Elizabeth Sclater.
Bombay, March 13, 1758. An account of a first arrival at
Bombay and of her father's house there.

To her aunt, Mrs. Pickering. (Elizabeth, wife of Dr.
Thomas Pickering, Vicar of St. Sepulchre's London.) Un-
dated. [1762 ?] Death of her sister Mary. Hopes to return
the next year with her children.

To her cousin, Miss Elizabeth Sclater. Bombay, Sept. 26,
1762. Her declining health.

APPENDIX 529

To her cousin, Miss Elizabeth Selater. Undated, but writ-
ten while on her visit to England. [1765 or 1766.]

To her cousin, Thomas Mathew Selater, Esq. Dated "Earl
of Chatham", May 2, 1767. Account of her voyage from
England as far as Santiago, Cape Verde Islands. Sterne
is mentioned.

To her cousin, T. M. Selater. Dated Malabar Coast, "Earl
of Chatham", Nov. 29, 1767. Further account of her voyage,
and fresh impressions of India.

To her aunt, Mrs. Pickering. "Bombay— High Meadow,"
March 21, 1768. Living in the country with her sister Louisa.

To her cousin, Miss Elizabeth Selater. Bombay, Oct. 28,

1768. Kemoval of Mr. Draper.

To her cousin, T. M. Selater. Tellicherry, Apr. 10, 1769.
Mr. Draper reinstated in his old post. Her life at the settle-
ment. Distress and chagrin over Mrs. Sterne's threats to
publish her letters to Sterne.

To her cousin, T. M. Selater. Tellicherry, May, 1769.
Interesting account of herself, of the marriage of her sister,
and of life in India, where she was born.

To her cousin, Miss Elizabeth Selater. Tellicherry, Oct. 27,

1769. Reigning as queen of the settlement. Death of her
son and of an uncle.

To her cousin, T. M. Selater. Surat, April 5, 1771, her
birthday. Details of her present life.

To her aunt, Mrs. Pickering. Bombay, Feb. 6, 1772.
Hopes to return to England within two years.

To her cousin, T. M. Selater. Bombay, March 4, 1772.
Mr. Draper has been removed from office. Sketch of his
character.

To T. M. Selater. Rajahmundry, Jan. 20, 1774. On her
separation from Mr. Draper and on the protection of her
uncle, Thomas Whitehill.

Lord Basing 's MSS contain also a copy of Sterne's first
letter to Mrs. Draper, which she sent to T. M. Selater, Esq.,
just before leaving England in 1767 ; a letter from her sister
Mary (Mrs. Rawson Hart Boddam) to her uncle, Dr. Picker-
ing, dated Bombay, Nov. 18, 1760; and the fragment of a
letter from Emma Springett to Mrs. Elizabeth Selater, dated
84

530 LAURENCE STERNE

Bombay, Jan. 7, 1794. The MSS are accompanied with notes
and a pedigree of the Sclaters.

A long letter from Mrs. Draper to some member of her
family in England, perhaps her father, is in the British
Museum (Additional MSS 33963). Tellicherry, April, 1769.
Mrs. Draper is assisting her husband with his correspondence.

Three letters which Mrs. Draper wrote on the evening of
her elopement, Jan. 14, 1773, were published in the Times of
India for Feb. 24, 1894, and in the overland weekly issue for
March 3, 1894. The originals are in a private collection at
Bombay. A letter from Mrs. Draper to John Wilkes, dated
March 22, [1775?] is among the Wilkes MSS in the British
Museum. See also the Gibbs Manuscripts as described above.

v STERNE'S PUBLISHED WORKS

Except in so far as stray letters have escaped observation,
the following lists comprise all of Sterne's works that have
been published. The many forgeries which appeared in his
name during and after his lifetime have been purposely
excluded.

The Case of Elijah and the Widow of Zerephath [sic] , con-
sider 'd: A Charity-Sermon Preach 'd on Good-Friday, April
17, 1747. In the Parish Church, of St. Michael-le-Belfrey,
before The Right Honourable the Lord-Mayor, Aldermen,
Sheriffs and Commoners of the City of York, at the Annual
Collection for the Support of two Charity-Schools. By
Laurence Sterne, M.A. Prebendary of York. York : Printed
for J. Hildyard Bookseller in Stonegate: and Sold by Mess.
Knapton, in St. Paul's Church- Yard; Mess. Longman and
Shewell, and M. Cooper, in Pater-noster-Row, London.
M.DCC.XLVII. [Price Six-Pence.]

8vo. Printed by Caesar Ward. Dedicated to the Very Reverend
Richard Osbaldeston, D.D., Dean of York.

The Abuses of Conscience: Set forth in a Sermon,
Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter's, York, at the
Summer Assizes, before The Hon. Mr. Baron Clive, and the
Hon. Mr. Baron Smythe, on Sunday, July 29, 1750. By
Laurence Sterne, A.M. Prebendary of the said Church.

APPENDIX 531

Published at the Request of the High Sheriff and Grand Jury.
York : Printed by Caesar Ward : for John Hildyard, in Stone-
gate, 1750. [Price Six-Pence.]

8vo. Dedicated to Sir William Pennyman, Bart. High Sheriff of
the County of York, and to the Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, whose
names are all given.

A Political Romance, Addressed To , Esq; of

York. To which is subjoined a Key. York : Printed in the
Year MDCCLIX. [Price One Shilling.]

8vo. The title-page contains a quotation from Horace as given in
this biography on p. 164. Title and Romance, pp. 1-24. Postscript,
pp. 25-30. The Key, pp. 31-47. Two letters signed by Sterne and
dated at Sutton-on-the-Forest, Jan. 20, 1759, pp. 49-60. By a printer's
error the signature to the second letter appears as Lawrence Sterne.
The printer was doubtless Caesar Ward.

Of this rare pamphlet, three copies only are known to exist: one in
the Library of the Dean and Chapter, York; one in the Subscription
Library, York; and one in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Sterne's Romance brought to a ludicrous close a hot controversy, in
which three other pamphlets appeared. The first was by Dr. Francis
Topham of the Prerogative Court of York; the second was by Dr. John
Fountayne, the Dean of York, with some aid from Sterne; and the third
was by Dr. Topham. Published anonymously, their titles ran:

A Letter Address 'd to the Reverend the Dean of York; in which is
given a full Detail of some very extraordinary Behaviour of his, in
relation to his Denial of a Promise made by him to Dr. Topham. York:
Printed in the Year MDCCLVIII. [Price Six-Pence]

An Answer to a Letter address 'd to the Dean of York, in the Name
of Dr. Topham. York: sold by Thomas Atkinson, Bookseller in the
Minster- Yard. MDCCLVIII.

A Reply to the Answer to a Letter lately addressed to the Dean
of York. York: printed in the Year MDCCLIX. [Price Six-Pence.]

The first of the three pamphlets is dated York, Dec. 11, 1758; to the
second is appended an attestation dated York, Dec. 24, 1758; to the
third is appended an attestation dated Dec. 26, 1758. Sterne thus
wrote his Romance during the first three weeks of January, 1759.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

1760.

Small 8vo.* Two vols. First edition. The title-page contains a
Greek quotation from the Encheiridion of Epictetus, the number of the
volume, but nothing further, — no place of publication, no name of
printer or publisher. But the advertisement of the forthcoming book
in the London Chronicle for Dec. 24 — Jan. 1, 1760, has the following

*The small octavos measure only 6x3% inches.

532 LAURENCE STEENE

addition to the title: "York, printed for and sold by John Hinxman
(Successor to the late Mr. Hildyard), Bookseller in Stonegate; J. Dod-
sley in Pallmall, .and M. Cooper in Pater-noster-row, London ; and by
all booksellers." This imprint appears in no extant copies so far as
known The volumes were in the hands of reviewers in Dec, 1759.
See pp. 181-183 of this biography.

On April 3, 1760, appeared the second edition of the first instalment
with the addition to the title-page of "London: Printed for E. and J.
Dodsley." The 'second edition also contains a frontispiece by Eavenet
after Hogarth and a dedication to the Eight Honourable Mr. Pitt.
The second edition was twice reissued by Dodsley during 1760.

There were several pirated editions. Especially interesting is an
edition having the imprint: "London. Printed for D. Lynch, 1760."
The copy in the Brittish Museum bears Sterne's signature. This edition
has the dedication to Pitt, but not the frontispiece.

The Sermons of Mr. Yorick. London : printed for R. and
J. Dodsley in Pali-Mall.

Small 8vo. Two vols., numbered I and H. No date. Published,
May 22, 1760. Bust portrait to vol. I. by Eavenet after Eeynolds.
Preface and Subscribers, followed by a second title-page.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall.
M.DCC.LXI.

Small 8vo. Vols. Ill and IV. Each volume contains on the title-
page a quotation from John of Salisbury. The first volume has a
frontispiece by Eavenet after Hogarth. Published on Jan. 28, 1761.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
London: Printed for T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, in the
Strand. MDCCLXII.

Small 8vo. Vols. V. and VI. Each volume has on the title-page
two quotations, one from Horace and one from Erasmus. The fifth
volume has a dedication to the Eight Honourable John, Lord Viscount
Spencer. Sterne's signature appears at the head of the first chapter.
Published on Dec. 21, 1761.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
London : Printed for T. Becket and P. A. Dehont [sic] , in the
Strand. MDCCLXV.

Small 8vo. Volumes VII and VIII. The title-page to each volume
has a quotation from Pliny. Signature at top of p. 1, vol. VII. Pub-
lished on Jan. 22, 1765.

APPENDIX 533

The Sermons of Mr. Yorick. London: Printed for T.
Becket and P. A. DeHondt, near Surry-Street, in the Strand.
MDCCLXVI.

Small 8vo. Two vols., numbered III and IV. Contents, a second
title-page, and Subscribers' Names. Published Jan. 22, 1766.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
London: Printed for T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, in the
Strand. MDCCLXVII.

Small 8vo. Vol. IX Latin quotation on title-page. Dedication to
a Great Man. Sterne's usual signature. Published on Jan. 30, 1767.

A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. By
Mr. Yorick. London: Printed for T. Becket and P. A.
DeHondt, in the Strand. MDCCLXVIII.

Two vols. Published in two styles: in small 8vo to match Tristram
Shandy, and in large 8vo on imperial paper. There is a list of Sub-
scribers with a star after the names of those who took imperial paper.
In some copies appears an Advertisement promising that the work will
be completed by the next winter. The Advertisement," being originally
a loose sheet to be inserted in copies of either of the two styles, was
rarely preserved. Published on February 24 or 25, 1768. See pp. 450-51
of this biography.

Sermons by the late Kev. Mr. Sterne. London: printed
for "W. Strahan ; T. Cadell, Successor to Mr. Millar ; and T.
Beckett [sic] and Co. in the Strand. MDCCLXIX.

Small 8vo. Three vols., numbered V, VI, VII. Contents and
Subscribers follow title-page. Published during the first week of
June, 1769.

A Political Eomance, Addressed To Esq. of

York. London. Printed and sold by J. Murdoch, bookseller,
opposite the New Exchange Coffee-house in the Strand.
MDCCLXIX.

12mo. Title, advertisement, and a list of the characters in the
allegory with their real names opposite, pp. iv-x, Eomance pp. 1-47.
This is a reprint, with mai textual changes, of the first half of the
pamphlet as it appeared in 17;, v The Key and the appended letters of
the first edition were entirely cut away. Hall-Stevenson seems to have
been responsible for the reissue. ,

\

534 LAUBENCE STEENE

Letters from Yorick to Eliza. London, printed for Gr.
Kearsly, at No. 46, in Fleet-street; and T. Evans, near York-
Buildings, Strand. 1775.

Small 8vo. One vol. Dedication to the Eight Honourable Lord
Apsley, preface, and ten undated letters which Sterne sent to Mrs.
Draper in the winter and spring of 1767. Published in Feb., 1775,
apparently with Mrs. Draper's sanction.

Sterne's Letters to His Friends on Various Occasions.
To which is added, His History of a "Watch Coat, with Ex-
planatory Notes. London : printed for G. Kearsly, at No. 46,
opposite Fetter-Lane, Fleet-Street; J. Johnson, in St. Paul's
Church- Yard ; and T. Evans, in the Strand. MDCCLXXV.

Small 8vo. One vol. Introduction and thirteen letters, counting
the Watch, Coat (a reprint of the abridged Political Romance), which
is treated as a letter. Published on July 12, 1775. Letters I-III
comprise Sterne's first letter to Garrick, Dr. Eustace's letter to Sterne,
and Sterne's reply to Dr. Eustace. Letters IV-X have often been
pronounced spurious, apparently on the authority of William Combe,
the author of Doctor Syntax, who said that he wrote seven of the letters
in this volume. (See Combe's preface to his anonymous Letters sup-
posed to have been written by Yoriolc and Eliza, London, 1779.) But
Combe was lying. Some, and perhaps all, of the letters which he claimed
to have fabricated in 1775, are genuine. Letter V had appeared in the
London Magazine for March, 1774; and was to be published later in
1775, by Sterne's daughter, evidently from her father's copy. As she
printed it, it bears the superscription "To Mrs. M[ea]d[ow]s, Coxwould,
July 21, 1765." Letter IX exists in Sterne's own hand; it is the letter
to Mrs. Elizabeth Vesey, "dated London June 20", in the Morgan
Manuscripts. Letter X, in which Sterne refers to rumours of his death,
may be accepted. So, too, Letter XII, on his library and books.
Letters VI, VII, VIII and XI may be forgeries, though they are more
likely genuine.

Letters of the late Eev. Mr. Laurence Sterne, to his most
intimate Friends. With a Fragment in the Manner of
Rabelais. To which are prefix 'd, Memoirs of his Life and
Family, written by Himself. And published by his Daughter,
Mrs. Medalle. London : printed for T. Beck^c, the Corner of
the Adelphi, in the Strand. 1775.

Small 8vo. Three vols. Dedication ( ^6 Garrick, two poems in
memory of Sterne, memoirs or autobir ^aphy, 118 letters, and a frag-
ment which Sterne had cast aside irymaking up the fourth volume of
Tristram Shandy. A frontispiece '.o the first volume represents Mrs.

APPENDIX 535

Medalle leaning over the bust of her father, from an engraving by
Caldwall after West. Published on Oct. 25, 1775, though the preface
bears the date, ' ' June 1775 ' '. At the same time, Becket placed on sale
a bronze bust of Sterne, "an exceeding good likeness". This is the
largest and best single collection of Sterne's letters as originally
published.

Original Letters of the late Reverend Mr. Laurence Sterne ;
never before published. London : printed at the Logographic
Press, and sold by T. Longman, Pater-Noster Row ; J. Robson,
and W. Clarke, new Bond Street ; and "W. Richardson, under
the Royal Exchange. 1788.

12mo. One vol. Thirty-nine letters from Sterne to various friends,
of which thirty had previously appeared in the European Magazine
(Feb., 1787-Feb., 1788). Some of the letters are of doubtful authen-
ticity, and others have certainly been tampered with; but most of them
are in the main genuine beyond reasonable doubt, for the truth of the
incidents related therein may be confirmed, partly by the Morgan
Manuscripts and partly by what is known of Sterne from other sources.
Of especial interest are letters VIII, IX, XI, XVIII, XIX, XXI
(which may be dated Jan. 1, 1767), XXII, XXIII, XXXVII, and

XXXIX. "Mrs. V " of the correspondence is Mrs. Vesey; "Lady

C — > — H " is probably Lady Caroline Hervey ; and ' ' W. C. Esq. " may
be William Combe, Esq., with whom Sterne was acquainted. It may be
conjectured that Combe was responsible for the publication.

Seven Letters written by Sterne and His Friends, hitherto
unpublished. Edited by W. Durrant Cooper, P. S. A. Lon-
don: printed for private circulation, by T. Richards, 100, St.
Martin's Lane. 1844.

8vo. One vol. Most interesting for two letters from Sterne to
Hall-Stevenson respecting Sterne in France, and for Cooper's notes on
the Demoniacs.

Unpublished Letters of Laurence Sterne. In Miscellanies
of the Philobiblon Society, vol. II (London, 1855-56).

Preface by John Murray (1808-92), who found the manuscripts
among his father's papers. Thirteen letters — twelve from Sterne to
Miss Catherine de Fourmantelle, and one from her, apparently written
at Sterne's dictation, to a friend in London. Five of the letters had
previously appeared in Isaac D 'Israeli's Miscellanies of Literature,
vol. I, 27-28 (London, 1840).

536 LAURENCE STERNE

Three Letters forming a part of the Alfred Morrison Col-
lection as described above. (Catalogue of the same, printed
for private circulation, VI. [London], 1892.) For fac-
simile of the second letter, see plate 153 of the Catalogue.

Pour Letters from Sterne to Lord Fauconberg. In six-
teenth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission.
Various Collections, vol. II, 189-92 (London, 1903). De-
scribed above.

Single Letters :

Letter addressed to * * * *, beginning "I have received
your kind letter of critical, and I will add, of parental
advice." (Sterne's Works X, 138-141, London, 1780.)
Sterne's copy of this letter on the indiscretions of Tristram
Shandy, hitherto supposed to be spurious, forms a part of the
Morgan Letter-Book. The letter as published differs con-
siderably from the copy in Sterne's hand. In the manuscript,
it bears the superscription "York, Jan. 1, 1760." See
Sterne's Letters and Miscellanies I, 181, in Works (New York,
1904).

The so-called Hay Letter (Gentleman's Magazine, vol.
LXIII, Pt. II, 587). See Letters and Miscellanies, I, 124-26.

Letter to George Whatley, Esq., treasurer of the London
Foundling Hospital, dated March 25, 1761 (Monthly Reposi-
tory of Theology and General Literature, I, 406).

Letter to Dodsley on the publication of Tristram Shandy
(T. F. Dibdin, Reminiscences, Pt. I, 207 (London, 1836).
See Letters and Miscellanies, I, 127-129.

Letter to Mrs. Sterne, dated Paris, March 15, 1762. Con-
tributed by H. A. B. to Notes and Queries, first series, V, 254.

Letter to Becket, his publisher, dated Coxwould, Sept. 3,
1767. Contributed by Edward Foss to Notes and Queries,
second series, iv, 126.

Letter to Becket, dated Paris, Oct. 19, 1765 (Notes and
Queries, fourth series, XII, 244-45).

Verses occasion 'd by hearing a Pass-Bell. In Thomas
Gill's Vallis Eboracensis, 199-200 (London, 1852).

APPENDIX 537

An Unpublished Fragment (Fragment inedit), addressed
to Mr. Cook. In Paul Stapf er 's Laurence Sterne, sa Personne
et ses Ouvrages. (Paris, 1870.)

Collected Works. In 1780, the publishers who owned the
copyrights on Sterne's books brought out "all the works of
Mr. Sterne, either made public during his lifetime or since
his death." Ten volumes, 8vo. A few letters, now known
to be genuine, were not included. This edition of Sterne's
works has been the basis of most subsequent editions. It was
reissued in 1894, with the omission of many sermons and some
of the letters, under the supervision of Professor Saintsbury.
(6 vols., London and New York.) Additional letters are
contained in the edition by Dr. J. P. Brown (4 vols., London,
1873, often reprinted). For the Works of Laurence Sterne
(12 vols., New York, 1904; reissued in 6 vols.), the author of
this biography collected and rearranged nearly all Sterne's
published letters, and had transcribed all the letters of Sterne
and Mrs. Draper in the British Museum. No letters, however,
of the volume of 1788 were included, for they were all then
held to be spurious,

INDEX

Abuses of Conscience, sermon, 82 and

n, 85-86, 227, 351, 530-531.
Azta Eruditorum, 143.
Adams, John, anecdote of Sterne,

229 n.
Addison, Joseph, 147 and n, 407.
Admonitory Letter addressed to the

Rev. Mr. S , An, 265.

Alembert, Jean le Bond d', 278.
Anatomy oi Melancholy, see Burton,

Robert.
Anderson, Sir Edmund, 158.
Answer to a Letter address'd to the

Dean of Tork, 162 n, 163, 176, 531.
Apsley, Baron, 505, 534.
Arbuthnot, Dr. John, Martin Scrib-

lerus, 134-135.
Aristophanes, 522.
Aristotle, 516.
Arms, coat of, Sterne's, 4.
Arnaud, Abbfi Francois, 280.
Ash, Mrs. and Miss, 113-114 and n.
Ashton, Charles, 27.
Athenaeum, The, 183 n, 414, 489 n.
Atkinson, Dr. James, 110.
Aumale, Due d', 289 n.

Bacon, Francis, 138.

Bagehot, Walter, on Sterne's sermons,
230; on Sterne's character, 515.

Bagge, Charles Ernest, Baron de, 286.

Barrymore, Countess of, wife of fifth
Earl, 342.

Basing, first Baron, 403.

Basing, second Baron, 403, 528, 529.

Bath, Sterne's visit to, 339-341.

Bathurst, first Earl, introduces himself
to Sterne, 200; friendship with,
216, 407, 505, 506, 511.

Baxter, Richard, 7 and n, 8.

Bayle's Dictionary, 260.

Beauchamp, Lord, son of Earl of
Hertford, 325.

Beauclerk, Topham, 456.

Beeket, Thomas, Sterne's second pub-
lisher, 266, 295, 296, 312, 316, 322,
333, 350, 351 n, 386, 450, 460,
S25, 527, 528, 532, 533, 536; at

Sterne's funeral, 463 ; sums re-
ceived from, 471 ; negotiations with

Lydia, 474-475, 484 ; negotiations

with Mrs. Draper, 487, 491.
Bedford, fourth Duke of, 290, 325.
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, novels, 29.
Belasyse, or Bellasyse, Lord, 398.
Berdmore, William, Preb. of York, 92,

157, 227 n, 524.
Berenger, Richard, 201-202, 248, 473,

526.
Berkeley, George, sermons, 144.
Berkeley, Lord, 291.
Beroalde de Verville, Moyen de Par-

nevir, 131, 133, 134, 136, 471 n.
Bertram Montfichet, The Life and

Opinions of, 254.
Beveridge, William, sermons, 224.
Bible, Sterne's style founded on, 144,

281, 479, 518.
Biron, Due de, 285-286.
Bissy, Comte de, friendship with

Sterne, 275, 283-285, 324, 370.
Blackburne, Francis, Archdeacon of

Cleveland, 89, 91, 525.
Blackburne, Lancelot, Archbishop of

York, appoints Sterne to Sutton,

39; character, 67.
Blake, Rev. John, of York, identified,

112-113; Sterne's intimate letters

to, 113-115, 154, 183, 184, 515,

527.
Blaquiere, Col. John, 347.
Blondel, L'Art de jetter les Bombes,

142.
Blount, Charles, PhUostratus, 137.
Boddam, Mary, see Sclater, Mary.
Boddam, Rawson Hart, 409.
Bode, J. J. C, translator, 454, 462

and ■«.
Boissy, Louis de, Le Francaise a

Londres, 50 «, 273.
Book without a Title-page, A, 254.
Boldero, John, of York, 100 and n,
Bolingbroke's Patriot King, 247, 283.,
Bombay Quarterly Review, 504 n.
Bonrepos, M., of Toulouse, 311.

539

540

INDEX

Booth, George Sclater, see Basing,
first Baron.

Boswell, James, meets Sterne, 265 ;
quoted, 377, 383 n, 394.

Bouchet, Guillaume, Series, 131, 132-
133, 134, 136, 471 n.

Bradshaw, John, Sterne's tutor, 27.

Braithwaite, Dr. Mark, of York, 156,
157, 158; introduced into A Poli-
tical Romance, 165.

Bridges, Thomas, of York, portrait of
Sterne, 110, 116.

Broadley, Matthew, of Halifax, 19.

Brook, Sir Eobert, Oraunde Abridge-
ment, 138.

Brousse et Fils, of Toulouse, 294.

Brown, Dr. Jemmet, Bishop of Cork,
426.

Browne, Sir Thomas, Religio Medici,
144.

Bruscambille, Pensles Factieuses, 131,
133, 134, 471 n.

Burford, Robert, 509-510.

Burgersdicius, Francis, Sterne's bur-
lesque of, 30.

Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury,
7 and n, 8.

Burney, Charles, 222.

Burton, Dr. John, of York, Tory
leader, 64 ; persecution by Jaques
Sterne, 75-78; his books, 76, 78,
140; caricatured in Tristram
Shandy, 80, 180, 238-240, 241;
caricature by Romney, 110-111.

Burton, Robert, Sterne's indebtedness
to Anatomy of Melancholy, 139-140,
149, 236, 260, 264 and n, 334, 398
and n.

Bute, third Earl of, 248, 342.

.Calais, Sterne's inn at, 361-365.
Callis, Marmaduke, curate, 234.
Campbell, Col. Donald, purse for

Sterne's widow and daughter, 488

and n, 489.
Cannon, Charles, Sterne's first tutor,

27.
Cannon, Richard, history of Roger

Sterne's regiment, 12 a.
Carlyle, Alexander, 121.
Carmontelle, Louis, portrait of Sterne,

288-289, 293, 361, 381.
Carr, John, imitator of Sterne, 215.
Carter, Mrs. Elizabeth, 340, 426 n.
Cataneo, Libra di Fortificare, 141.
Centlivre, Mrs., Busy Body, 312.
Cervantes, 131, 132, 180, 245, 331,

401, 435, 523.

Chamfort, S. R. N. de, 326.

Chapman, Richard, of Newburgh
Priory, 258, 294, 315.

Chapone, Hester, 499.

Chappelow, Rev. Leonard, 197.

Charles I., King, 6, 9-10.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 279, 516.

Cheap, Rev. Andrew, Sterne's suc-
cessor at Sutton, 468; suit for
dilapidations, 472.

Chesterfield, fourth Earl of, 199, 200,
361.

Choiseul, Due de, grants Sterne pass-
ports, 275, 284, 290; attracted to
Sterne, 285; also 370.

Cholmley, Nathaniel, 195, 198, 204,
207.

Christopher Wagstaffe, The Life and
Adventures of, 267.

Churchill, Charles, 324 n.

Cibber, Colley, 279, 312.

Clairon, Mile., 273, 274.

Clark, Sir John, 501, 504, 510.

Clayton, Robert, Bishop of Cork, 219.

Clement, Pere Denis Xavier, 274-275.

Clockmaher's Outcry against the
Author of * * * Tristram Shandy,
The, 213.

Clonmel, Ireland, birthplace of Lau-
rence Sterne, 13, 16, 94.

Clough, John, of York, 162.

Cliiver, Philipp, Germania Antigua,
burlesque of, 33.

Coke, Lady Mary, on Sterne's death,
461 and n.

Colebrooks, Mr., 297.

Coleridge, S. T., on Sterne, 399, 520.

Colley, Launcelot, curate, 346.

Collier, Marmaduke, curate, 234, 346.

CoIIignon, Dr. Charles, dissector of
Sterne's body, 464, 465.

Colman, George, 425.

Combe, William, acquaintance with
Mrs. Draper, 507 ; Letters Supposed
to have been Written by Yorick
and Eliza, 508; as probable editor
of Sterne's letters, 534, 535.

Congreve, William, plays, 29.

Conti, Prince de, 286, 324.

Cooper, W. D., 283 n, 311 n, 535.

Cornelys, Mrs. Theresa, her assem-
blies, 397-398, 402, 441-442.

Cosway, Richard, portrait of Mrs.
Draper, 407.

Cowper, Rev. Charles, Preb. of York,
92, 116, 157.

Cowper, George Nassau Cowper, third
Earl of, meets Sterne, 379.

INDEX

541

Cowper, Lady Georgians, 224.

Cowper, Mr., of London, 343.

Cox, Thomas, History of the Gram-
mar School at Heath, 23 n.

Coxwold, or Coxwould, Sterne appointed
curate of, 200; described, 235, 257-
260, 422. See also Shandy Hall.

Gradock, Joseph, 215 and n.

Craufurd, John, of Errol, in Paris
with Sterne, 370-371; anecdote,
371-372; appointment with Sterne,
439 ; dinner on day of Sterne's
death, 461.

Crazy Castle, see Shelton Castle.

Crazy Tales, 120, 128-129, 151, 299,
309, 310, 336 n.

Cream of Jest, The, or The Wits Out-
witted, 214.

Crebillon, C. P. Jolyot de, comic
agreement with Sterne, 288 ; sub-
scribes to Sermons, 350.

Critical Review on Tristram Shandy
(vols. I-II), 193; (vols. III-IV),
252-253; (vols. "V-VI), 267-268 and
n ; (vols. VII-VIII), 335 and n;
(vol. IX), 400; on Sermons (vols.
I-II), 223-224; on Sentimental
Journey, 452.

Croft, family of, 66.

Croft, Henrietta, 66.

Croft, John, of York, Anecdotes of
Sterne, quoted or referred to, 43
and n, 54, 56, 65, 72, 102, 131,
181-182, 184, 205, 209, 229, 249,
314, 462, 471.

Croft, Stephen, of Stillington, friend-
ship with Sterne, 65-66, 105, 107,
109, 207; rescues Tristram Shandy
from the flames, 179; takes Sterne
to London, 195, 198, 200, 209 ;
Sterne's letters to, 205, 212, 238,
246, 248, 250, 253, 493; Sterne's
attorney, 294; enclosing commons,
333, 387; purchases the Sterne
lands at Sutton, 490.

Cromwell, Oliver, 6, 36.

Crossley, James, 136 n.

Cumberland, Duke of, 69-70.

Cumberland Regiment of Foot, see
Thirty-Fourth or Cumberland Regi-
ment of Foot.

Cunningham, Allan, on Sterne's death,
459 and n.

Cunningham (Conyngham), Francis
Burton, second Baron, 339.

Oustobadie, Jacob, registrar, 92.

Dance, Nathaniel, bust of Sterne, 381.
Dante, 516.

Danvers, Sir Charles, 311, 392.

Dashwood, Sir Francis, 122, 123,
248, 249.

Davies, Robert, Life of MarmaduJce
Bawdon, 9 b; Memoir of Dr. John
Burton, 77 n; Memoir of York
Press, 74 and n, 164, 182.

Dawson, Lady Anne, 426.

Dealtry, Dr. John, of York, 116, 183,
347.

Deffand, Mme. du, 371.

Defoe, Daniel, quoted, 18 and n, 41,
42 and n; Robinson Crusoe, 453.

Delany, Mrs. Mary, 219 and n, 224.

Delany, Patrick, 219.

Delaval, Francis Drake, 249.

Delavals, 395 and n, 439.

Demoniacs, 122-129, 309, 320, 416,
535.

Dessein, M., a real person, 360, 361-
363; Sterne at his inn, 363-365.

Dewes, Mrs. John, 219 and n, 224.

Dibdin, T. F., 110 and n, 536.

Diderot, Denis, Natural Son (Le Fils
Naturel), 27 4, 279; friendship with
Sterne, 278-279, 287, 326, 370;
Jacques le Fatalists, 279; subscribes
to Sermons, 350; compared with
Sterne, 518.

Dillon, J. T., 290, 406, 419.

Ditchfleld, P. H., Parish Clerk, 245 n.

Dodington, George Bubb, Baron Mel-
combe, 122, 249.

Dodsley, Robert, at first refuses Tris-
tram Shandy (vols. I-II), 179-180,
181, 182, 183; publishes second edi-
tion, 202-203, 532; agreements with
Sterne, 195, 208, 221; sums paid
to Sterne, 471.

Dormer, Charles Cottrell, 207.

Douglas, J., Bombay and Western
India, 488 n, 496 n, 504 n, 510 n.

Drake, Dr. Francis, 74-75.

Draper, Daniel, early career in India,
405 ; visit to England with his wife
and children, 405; Sterne's letter to,
424; Tellicherry, 485; Surat, 496;
removed from his post, 496-497;
quarrel with his wife, 497-498; her
elopement, 500, 504.

Draper, Mrs. Elizabeth (wife of
Daniel Draper), family history, 403-
404 ; birth at Anjengo, 404 ; educa-
tion, 404 ; marriage, 405 ; children,
405, 410, 486; visit to England,
405 et seq.; meeting with Sterne at
Mrs. James's, 406; excursions to-
gether, 407; her portraits, 407, 410;

542

INDEX

summons home, 408; Sterne's in-
fatuation, 408-412, 440, 519, 520;
her departure for India, 411;
Sterne's Journal to Eliza, 412-432;
her life at Bombay and Tellicherry,
485-486 ; alarmed by Mrs. Sterne's
threat to publish her letters to
Sterne, 486-487 ; raises a purse for
Mrs. Sterne, 487-488; at Surat,
496; return to Bombay, 496-497;
disagreement with her husband, 497-
498, 500; a Blue-Stocking, 498-
499; friends, 499-500; meets AbbS
Raynal, 500; elopement with Sir
John Clark, 500-501; letter in justi-
fication of conduct, 501-503 and n;
at Masulipatam, 503-505 ; return to
England, 505 ; publishes letters
from Sterne, 491, 505-506; atten-
tions from Wilkes, 506, Combe and
Raynal, 507; death, 507; tomb,
507-508; eulogy by Raynal. 500,
508-509; other tributes, 509-510;
unpublished letters, 528-530; also
343, 457, 494.

Draper, Sir William, 405.

Drummond, Robert Hays, Archbishop
of' York, 259 ; leave of absence
granted Sterne, 268, 289, 313-314;
anonymous letter against Sterne,
399-40.0; Sterne's visits to, 421, 425..

Dryden, John, 144.

Dumesnil, Mile. Marie Franchise, 273.

Dunton, John, Voyage Bound the
World, 135-136 and n, 267.

D'Urfey, Tom, An Essay towards the
Theory of the IntelUgible World,
135; compared with Sterne, 218.

Dutens, Louis, anecdote of Sterne, 290-
292 and ».

Bachard, John, 27, 32 n.

Bdgcumbe, Emma Gilbert, Countess of,

160, 246, 259, 473.
Bdgcumbe, Richard, second Baron, 199.
Editions of Sterne's works, described,

530-537.
Bdmundsons, 295, 299.
Effingham, third Earl of, 332, 344,

347, 349.
Eglinton, Lord, 461.
Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath,

sermon, 84-85, 184, 227, 530.
Eliza, see Draper, Mrs. Elizabeth.
Epictetus, Encheiridion, 183, 531.
Epinay, Mme. d', 384.
Epistolm Obscurorum Tirorum, 127.
Erasmus, Colloquia, 137, 264, 532.

Ernulf, Bishop of Rochester, Textus
Roffensis, 138, 236, 239, 240, 252.

Errington, Mr., with Sterne in Italy,
380, 381, 382, 386.

European Magazine, 111 n, 385 n.

Eustace, Dr., of North Carolina, let-
ter and walking-stick, 443-444, 534.

Explanatory Remarks upon * * *
Tristram Shandy, 213-214.

Fagniani, Marchesa, Sterne's en-
counter with at Milan, 378-379.

Fairfax, Thomas, Lord, 53 and n.

Faldoni, G. A., engraver, 111.

Farmer, Richard, 218-219.

Fauconberg, Thomas, first Earl of, pa-
tron, 92, 105, 106, 235; nominates
Sterne to Coxwold, 200; grants
Sterne leave of absence, 289 ; Sterne
sends him wine, 318; also 264, 394,
396, 398, 463, 468, 469, 527, 536.

Felix, Father, original of Father Lo-
renzo, 363-364.

Fenton, Mrs., of London, 473.

Ferdinand, Prince, of Brunswick, 207,
247.

Ferguson, Mrs., 342, 440, 519, 526.

Ferriar, John, Illustrations of Sterney
132 n; on Sterne's death, 459 n.

Fielding, Henry, compared with Sterne,
401, 435, 523.

Fitzgerald, Percy, Life of Sterne, 23-
24 and n; 114, 164. See also the
Preface.

Fitzmaurice, Dr., 318.

Fitzmaurice, Thomas, 442 n.

Fitzwilliam, second Earl of, 332.

Fizes, Dr. Antoine, of Montpellier, 319,
321-322.

Flud, Robert, Utrvus Cosmi * * *
Historia, 138.

Foley, Mr., Sterne's banker at Paris,
294, 312, 315-316, 321, 322, 331,
338, 350, 361, 370, 428, 526.

Fontenelle, Pluralite" des Mondes, 146,
148.

Foote, Samuel, 249, 252, 265; Trip to
Calais, 36£; in Paris with Sterne,
370, 371.

Forbes, James, Oriental Memoirs, 500
and n, 509.

Fothergill, Marmaduke, of York, 117,
179, 295; anecdote of Sterne, 347 J
letters from Sterne, 473.

Fountayne, John, Dean of York, at
Cambridge with Sterne, 28; ap-
pointed Dean of York, 83; aids
Sterne, 87, 89, 92-93, 94, 96, 105,

INDEX

543

155, 156; quarrel with Dr. Top-
ham, 154-164 ; pamphlet against
Topham, 163 ; aided by Sterne, 158-
159, 163-164; introduced into A
Political Romance, 165-167, 169 ;
purchases Sterne's lands at Sutton,
490.

Fourmantelle, Miss Catherine, Sterne's
flirtation with, 185-187, 196, 199,
203-204, 275, 519, 535; appears as
Jenny in Tristram Shandy, 401.

Fox, Charles James, 273, 324.

Fox, Stephen, 273, 280, 324.

Fragment in the Manner of Rabelaist
492.

Francavilla, Princess, 380.

Franklin, Benjamin, 255, 394.

Frazer, J. B., 509.

Frenais, J. P., translator, 454, 455 n.

Fumel, Comtesse de, of Toulouse, 311.

Funeral Discourse occasioned by tha
much lamented Death of Mr. Torick,
A, 264.

"Gabriel John," see D'Urfey, Tom.

Gainsborough, Thomas, portrait of
Sterne, 341 and n, 361, 513; por-
trait of Ignatius Sancho, 390.

Galiani, Abbe, bon mot of Sterne, 384
and n.

Galileo, 143.

Gambier, Mr., 499-500.

Garat, D. J., 282 n, 287, 336.

Gardes, J. F., of Albi, 490.

Garland, Nathaniel, 124, 320.

Garrick, David, praises Tristram
Shandy, 194; introduces Sterne to
London society, 196 and n, 198,
214, 511, 514; subscriber to Ser-
mons, 222 ; friendship with Sterne,
248, 251; lends Sterne £20, 268;
receives account of Sterne's recep-
tion in Paris, 273-274, 275-276,
283, 287; misunderstanding between
Garrick and Sterne, 330; renewal
of intimacy, 337-338, 344; Oymon,
392-393; at Skelton with Sterne,
425; Sterne's death announced to,
461; epitaph for Sterne's tomb, 466,
492; receives dedication of Sterne's
letters, 491, 492; also 394, 473, 493,
528, 534.

Garrick, Mrs., regard for Sterne, 338,
511; also 519.

Gay, John, Beggar's Opera, 49, 68
and rt.

Gazette Littdraire, 276, 285 7V,

General Advertiser, 85 n.

Gent, Thomas, York printer, 52 and
n, 72 and n.

Gentleman's Magazine, 268.

Geoffrin, Mme. Marie Therese, 279,
282.

George III., King, 247, 248, 259, 394;
as Asa in Sterne's Sermons, 478.

Gibbs, Thomas Washbourne, of Bath,
413-414, 525.

Gilbert, Emma, daughter of Archbishop
Gilbert, see Edgcumbe, Countess of.

Gilbert, John, Archbishop of York, ap-
pointment, 159; his part in quarrel
between Dean Fountayne and Dr.
Topham, 160-161, 162-163; intro-
duced into A Political Romance,
167-169; friendly to Sterne, 179,
200; death, 259.

Gilflllan, John, York printer, 73, 74.

Gill, Thomas, Vallis Eboracensis, 39;
Sterne's Unknown World, 149-151,
536.

Goethe, on Sterne, 217, 545.

Goldsmith, Oliver, attack on Sterne,
217-218; meets Sterne, 265.

Gordon, Charles, fourth Earl of
Aboyne, Sterne chaplain to, 54.

Gordon, Lord William, 371.

Gore, Mrs., 339.

Gorecius, Descriptio Belli Ivonice, 141.

Graeme, Miss Elizabeth, of Philadeli
phia, meets Sterne, 347-348.

Grafton, third Duke of, subscriber to
Sentimental Journey, 452; receives
news of Sterne's death, 461.

Granby, Marquis of, 332.

Gray, Sir James, 461.

Gray, Thomas, on Hall- Stevenson, 119;
on Sterne, 195, 203, 216 and n,
224 and n.

Greene, Eev. Thomas, 464.

Gresset's Yer-Tert, 336 and n.

Grey, Eev. Zachary, edition of Hudi-
bras, 137, 197.

Griffith, Richard, The Koran, 490-491
and n.

Griffiths, Ralph, see Monthly Review.

Gunter, Sines and Tangents, 141.

Hafen Slawkenbergius, The Life and
Amours of, 265.

Hailstone, Edward, of Bradford, 164.

Halifax, second Earl of, 248.

Halifax grammar schools, Sterne's edu-
cation there, 17-25.

Hall, George Laweon, 125,

544

INDEX

Hall, Dr. Joseph, Sterne's use of in
sermons, 131, 144, 226, 227, 353,
356.

Hall-Stevenson, John, see Stevenson,
John Hall-.

Hamilton, Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess
of, Sterne's renrark on, 393.

Hannah, Sterne's correspondence with,
440.

Hanxwell, Rev. Richard, 53.

Harland, family of, 63.

Harland, Philip, of Sutton, 39; rela-
tions with Sterne, 63-65, 105, 106,
350; ridiculed in Tristram Shandy,
64, 244.

Harland, Richard, of York, sells land
to Sterne, 58, 63 and n, 490.

Harris, James, Hermes, 215.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, on Mrs. Sterne's
portrait, 109-110 and n.

Heath Grammar School, 19; tradi-
tions of Sterne's attendance at, 19-
21; History of, 23 n.

Hebert, Agnes, see Sterne, Agnes.

Heine, H., 454; on Sterne, 455 and n.

Herbert, George, Outlandish Proverbs,
450 and n.

Herring, Thomas, Archbishop of York,
68 and n; Association for Defence
of Kingdom, 69 and n; attacks on
Church of Rome, 81 and n; trans-
lated to Canterbury, 82.

Herring, William, Chancellor of York,
89, 90, 92, 227 n, 524.

Hertford, Earl of, Ambassador to
Paris, 325; invites Sterne to preach
at embassy, 326-328; letter of in-
troduction, 382.

Hervey, John, Lord, 341.

Hesselridge, Thomas, 349, 350, 528.

Hewitt, William, a Demoniac, 126; at
Toulouse with Sterne, 294, 309, 811,
312; at Montpellier, 318; at Lyons,
320.

Hildesley, Mark, Bishop of Man, on
Sterne, 219-220.

Hildyard, John, York bookseller, 83,
89-91, 182, 530, 531, 532.

Hill, G. B., Johnsonian Miscellanies
215 n.

Hill, Dr. John, biographical sketch
of Sterne, 204-206, 207, 210, 211.

Hinde, Captain, original of uncle Toby,
188.

Hinxman, John, York bookseller, 181,
182, 183.

Hipperholme Grammar School, 19;
traditions of Sterne's attendance at,
21-23.

History of a Good Warm Watch-Ooat,
see Political Romance, A.

History of his own Times, Burnet's,
7 and n.

Hitch, Rev. Robert, Preb. of York, 52,
72.

Hobbee, Thomas, Leviathan, 32, 33.

Hogartih, William, Analysis of Beauty,
108; Politician, 109; illustrations to
Tristram Shandy, 202, 251, 480;
also 222, 514, 532.

Holbach, Paul Thiry, Baron d', friend-
ship with Sterne, 275, 277-278, 281,
324, 326, 370; also 350, 518.

Holbein, Hans, 137.

Holland, Henry Fox, first Baron, 201,
273.

Home, John, Siege of Aqvileia, 196 ;
Douglas, 328.

Homer, Sterne's fondness for, 24-25,
29.

Horace, Sterne's favourite Latin
author, 24; burlesqued, 30; motto
from, 264, 532.

Horne-Tooke, John, see Tooke, John
Home.

H'orsley, George, 499, 501.

Howe, Caroline, 461.

Hudson, A. H., of York, on Sterne's
letters to Blake, 114.

Human Understanding, The, see Locke,
John.

Hume, David, secretary to English
embassy at Paris, 325-326 and n,
370 ; quizzes Sterne on miracles,
328; laments Sterne's death, 461;
also 338.

Hurd, Richard, Bishop of Worcester,
267.

Hurdis, Thomas, Preb. of York, 116.

Hutton, Matthew, Archbishop of York,
appointment, 82; unfriendly towards
Sterne, 87, 91; favours Dr. Top-
ham in the great quarrel, 155, 157,
159; introduced into A Political
Romance, 165-166.

Hyder Ali, 486, 503.

Impromptu, An, 492.

Ireland, the Sternes of, 4; see also

Olonmel.
Irvine, Andrew ("Paddy"), 124, 126.

Jackson, Christopher, of Halifax, 21.

INDEX

545

James, Mrs. Anne (wife of Com-
modore James), friendship -with
Sterne, 396, 417-418, 440, 441-442,
456, 519 ; Sterne's last letter to,
458-459, 493; introduces him to
Mrs. Draper, 403; friendship with
Mrs. Draper, 405, 407, 410; letters
from Mrs. Draper, 413, 487, 497-
498; also 429, 431, 434, 437, 438,
484, 505, 525.

James, Commodore William, career,
395; marriage, 396; Sterne's in-
timacy with, 396; with Sterne be-
fore death, 458, 460; receives news
of Sterne's death, 461; at Sterne's
funeral, 463.

Jamme, Dr. Alexandre Auguste, of
Toulouse, 811; letter to, 381, 528.

Jaques, family of, ancestors of Lau-
rence Sterne, 9-10.

Jaques, Lady Mary, 9-10.

Jaques, Mary, granddaughter of the
preceding, see Sterne, Mary.

Jaques, Sir Roger, grandfather of
Mary Sterne, 9, 66.

Jaques, Eoger, brother of Mary Sterne,
10.

Jesus College, Cambridge, Sterne's
education there, 26-35 and n.

John of Salisbury, 238, 532.

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, Basselas, 144,
181; on Sterne, 218 and n, 224-
225; meeting between Sterne and
Johnson, 265-266; on Father Felix,
364; also 340, 456.

Johnstone, Charles, Ohrysal, 123 n.

Journal Encyclopidigue, on Tristram
Shandy, 276.

Journal to Eliza, manuscript, 412-414,
487, 525; preface, 414-415; con-
tents, 415 et seq.; as emotional
background to Sentimental Journey,
433-435.

Jubb, Henry, York apothecary, 79.

Jubb, Robert, York notary, 470.

Keller, Frederick, Sterne's association

with, 27, 33.
Kilner, James, curate, 294, 332-333.
Kingsley, Charles, 523.
Kirk, Thomas, of Cookridge, 44.
Koran, The, see Griffith, Richard.

Lady's Magazine, 490.

La Fleur, Sterne's valet, a real person,

360, 366-367, 368, 372, 373, 384-

385 and n.
Lamb, Charles, 433.

85

Lamberti, Marquise de, 365.
Lansdowne, first Marquis of, see Shel-

burne, Earl of.
La Popeliniere, A. J. J., attentions to

Sterne, 286, 302.
Lascelles, "Bombay," 425.
Lascelles, Edwin, M. P., 442 and n.
Lascelles, Rev. Robert ("Panty"),

124, 126, 128.
Laud, William, Archbishop of Can,

terbury, 5-6, 134 n.
Lawrence, Dr. Thomas, 194 n.
Lee, , of York, contributes £100

to the publication of Tristram

Shandy, 181, 183.
Lee, Arthur, of Virginia, Sterne's

friendship with, 393, and n, 394,

422, 433, 440.
Lee, Col. Charles, 125-126.
Lee, Sidney, article on Sterne in

Diet. Nat. Biog., quoted or referred

to, 54, 164, and Preface.
Leightonhouse, Walter, Preb. of Lin-
coln, Sterne's plagiarisms from, 476-

477 and n.
Lepell, Lady, see Mulgrave, Baroness.
Lespinasse, Mile, de, 282.
Lessing, coins empfindsam for senti-
mental, 454; on Sterne's death, 462,

512.
Letter address'd to * * * the Dean

of York, A, 163, 531.
Letter from a Methodist Preacher to

Mr. Sterne, 214.
Letter from the Rev. George Whitfield,

B.A., to the Rev. Laurence Sterne,

214.
Letters from Eliza to Yorick (spuri-
ous), 506.
Letters from Yorick to Eliza, 505-506,

534.
Letters of the Late Rev. Mr. Laurence

Sterne, 492-495, 534-535.
Levett, Rev. Richard, Preb. of York,

53 and n.
Life of William III. (anonymous), 140.
Light, Miss, companion of Mrs. Draper,

410.
Limory, G., of Albi, 490.
Lister, Thomas, of Heath Grammar

School, 20, 21, 26.
Lloyd, Robert, publishes premature

elegy on Sterne, 330-331.
Lloyd's Evening Post, 254, 394 n, 399,

411 n.
Locke, John, Buman Understanding,

Sterne'S admiration for, 33, 236,

279, 282, S18.

546

INDEX

Lomenie de Brienne, 308.

London Chronicle, 117 n, 177 n, 182,

195, 268, 269, 285 n, 324 n, 325 n,

380, 452 n, 531-532.
London Evening Post, 74, 77.
London Magazine, on Tristram Shandy

(vols. I-II), 193; (vols. Ill- IV),

251; (vols. V-VI), 268.
London, Sterne's visits to, 127-128,

194-209, 246-256, 265-268, 330-331,

337-343, 350, 384, 392-398, 403,

et seq., 441-443, 456-459.
Longinus, praised, 30.
Loreni, on fortifications, 141.
Lucian, Dialogues, ,'lsl1, 132; also 331,

522. "•■

Lully, Raymond, 32, 138.
Lumley, family of, 42-45 and n.
Lumley, Elizabeth, see Sterne, Eliza-
beth (wife of Laurence).
Lumley, Lydia, mother of Mrs. Sterne,

44-45.
Lumley, Lydia, sister of Mrs. Sterne,

44, 45.
Lumley, Robert, father of Mrs. Sterne,

43.
Luther, Martin, 137, 241.
Lyons, Sterne at, 301-304.
Lyttelton, George, first Baron, 199-

200, 216, 383.
Lyttelton, Lady Mary, correspondence

with Sterne, 212, 473, 526.

Macalister, Dr. Alexander, on dis-
position of Sterne's body, 465 and n.

Macartney, Sir George, in Paris with
Sterne, 273, 280; presents Sterne
with gold snuff box, 423 ; appoint-
ment with, 439; also 442, 452.

Macarty, Abb6, of Toulouse, 294, 296,
308, 310.,

Macdonald, Sir James, with Sterne in
Italy, 377-378, 379, 380, 381, 386;
illness and death, 382-383.

Macdonald, John, footman, 372 n;
present at Sterne's death, 461 and n.

Macdonald, Lady Margaret, 383.

Mackenzie, Dr. James, 140.

Macmillan's Magazine, quoted, 188.

Malone, Edmond, with Mrs. Sterne at
Marseilles, 391 and n; on Sterne's
death, 459 and n.

Malthus, Pratique de la Guerre, 143.

Mann, Sir Horace, 217; meets Sterne,
379 and n.

Manuscripts of Sterne, described, 524-
528. See alst the Preface.

March, third Earl of (afterwards

fourth Duke of Queensberry),

Sterne's associations with, 395, 461.
Marivaux, Pierre de, 131.
Marolois, Fortification ou Architecture

Militaire, 142.
Mathews, Charles, lays Sterne's ghost,

510.
Maynard, Sir William, fourth Baronet,

349, 350.
Mead, Dr. Richard, in Tristram

Shandy, 193-194.
Meadows, Mrs., 311, 316, 345-346,

534.
Medalle, Jean Baptiste Alexandre de,

husband of Lydia Sterne, 488-489

and n, 490.
Medalle, Mrs., see Sterne, Lydia.
Medmenham Abbey, 122-123 and n,

249.
Melcombe Regis, Lord, see Dodington,

George Bubb.
Mihill, Eliza, 501.
Miller, Joe, Jests, 29.
Mills, Mr., London merchant, 316, 322,

527.
Milner, Abraham, usher at Heath

grammar school, 20.
Milton, Paradise Lost, 49; also 481.
Monsey, Dr. Messenger, 205.
Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, 340, 498.
Montagu, George, fourth Duke of, 388,

402.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 506.
Montaigne, 131 ; Sterne's indebted-
ness to, 134 and a.
Monthly Repository, The, 103 n, 255 n.
Monthly Review, on Tristram Shandy

(vols. I-II), 193; (vols. III-IV),

251-252; (vols. V-VI), 268 and n;

(vols. VII- VIII), 336; Sermons

(vols. I-II), 222-223; Sentimental

Journey, 452-453.
Montpellier, Sterne's winter at, 317-

322.
Montreuil, Sterne's night at, 365-367.
Moor or Moore, Mrs., of Bath, 339,

473.
Moore, Cecil, History of St. George's

Chapel, 465 n.
Moore, Zachary, a Demoniac, 125 and

•/., 129.
Morellet, Abb6 Andrf, 277, 287, 384 n.
Morgan Manuscripts, 134 n, 212 n,

227 n, 236 n, 340 n, 342 n, 388 n,

392 n, 473 n, 517 n, 521 n, 526-

527. See also the Preface.
Mulgrave, second Baron, 341.
Mulgrave, Baroness, 341-342.

INDEX

547

Murphy, Arthur, School for Guardians,
393.

Murray, John, publisher, 185 and n,

535.
Musgrave, Eev. Eichard, Vicar of Stil-

lington, 53.

Napier, Logarithms, 141.

Naples, Sterne's -winter at, 380-381.

Needham, J. T., 290.

Newcastle, Duke of, 83, 84.

Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of, 499.

New Monthly Magazine, 219 n, 265 n.

Newman, J. H., on Sterne's eloquence,

479 and m.
Newton, John, 32, 33.
Newton, Dr. Thomas, Bishop of Bris-
tol, 197.
Newton, Rev. Thomas, successor of

Sterne at Coxwold, 468.
Nicholls, Dr. Prank, 194.
Nollekens, Joseph, bust of Sterne, 381

and n; replica, 469; also Preface.
Northumberland, Duchess of, 248.
Notes and Queries, 109 n, 111m, 265 m,

367 n, 392 n, 438 n, 451 n, 459 n,

469 n.
Nunehams, the, of Nunehain Hall,

friends of Mrs. Draper, 406, 410,

505.

Oglethorpe, J. E., 119.

Orbessan, Baron d', of Toulouse, 311.

Ord, J. W., History of Cleveland,
119 n, 125 n.

Original Letters of the late Rev. Lau-
rence Sterne, 194 n, 328 n, 535.

Orleans, Due d', 288.

Orme, Robert, History of the British
Nation in India, 395 and •«, 396.

Osbaldeston, Richard, Dean of York,
marries Sterne, 49; Sterne's sermon
dedicated to, 67-68; translated to
Carlisle, 82-83.

Ossory, Lord, see Upper Ossory, sec-
ond Earl.

Ovid, read by Sterne at school, 24.

Ozell, John, translator of Rabelais,
Sterne's indebtedness to, 132 and n,
236, 238 and », 241 and n, 260.

Pagan, Comte de, Traiti des Fortifica-
tions, 142.

Panchaud, M., Sterne's banker at
Paris, 294, 350, 370, 376, 382, 386,
387, 391, 399, 402, 428, 431, 452,
• 526, 527; failure, 482, 483.

Panchaud, Mile., 297.

Paris, Sterne's first visit, 272-292;
second visit, 323-329; third visit,
367-372; last visit, 384.

Pedigree of Sterne family, 11 n.

Pelletiere, Etienne Michel, 275.

Pennyman, Sir William, high sheriff,
Sterne chaplain to, 85, 86, 93.

Peploe, Samuel, Bishop of Chester,,
ordains Sterne priest, 38.

Percy, Lady Anne, Sterne's friendship
with, 342-343 and «, 344, 519.

Percy, Hugh (Earl Percy), 342.

Peters, Rev. Charles, 197.

Pickering, Dr. Thomas, uncle of Mrs.
Draper, 404, 409; his wife Eliza-
beth, 404, 485, 528, 529.

Piganiol de la Force, Nouveau Voyage
en France, used by Sterne, 300, 302,
335.

Pigott, William, Vicar of St. Ives, 36.

Pindar, Sterne's opinion of, 29.

Piozzi, Mrs. Hester Lynch, Journey
through France, 363-364, 365 and n.

Pitt, William, dedication of Tristram
Shandy (vols. I-II), 202-203, 532;
Sterne's admiration for, 247, 248,
251; letters of introduction, 268,
277, 382; dedication of last vol. of
Tristram Shandy, 399.

Pliny, 334, 532.

Political Romance, A, its occasion, 154-
164; described, 164-177; Key to
same, 169-173, 188-189; burned,
177, 178; editions of, 531, 533, 534.

Poole, John, dramatist, 360 n.

Pope, Alexander, Essay on Man, 49,
145-146, 153; Epistle to Dr. A.r-
buthnot, 135 ; Dying Christian, 149 ;
Imitations of Horace, 244; works,
279; also 407.

Portland, third Duke of, meets Sterne,
379.

Portraits of Sterne, by Ramsay, 34,
35 m; Bridges, 110; Steele, 110 f
Reynolds, 201 and m, 221, 253-254,
513; Carmontelle, 288-289, 293; a
second portrait by Reynolds, 331
and n; Gainsborough, 341 and n,
513; the Nollekens bust, 381 and n;
Dance's bust, 381. Eor later por-
traits see the Preface.

Posthumous Works of a late Celebrated
Genius, see Griffith, Richard.

Powell, William, actor, 337.

Pretender, the Young, 68-69, 74, 78,
518.

Preville, Pierre Louis, 273.

Price, David, Memoirs, 405 n.

548

INDEX

Prior, James, 391 n, 407.

Pryce, George, Popular History of

Bristol, 507 n, 508 n.
Public Advertiser, 256 n, 398 n.
PttMic Ledger, 211, 217, 399, 400.
Pufendorf, Samuel, Law of Nature,

burlesqued, 32-33.

Queensberry, fourth Dulse of, see
March, third Earl of.

Rabelais, Sterne's first acquaintance
-with, 28-29; indebtedness to, 132
and m, 136, 173, 193, 236, 241 and
n, 245, 252, 260, 268, 492; also
317, 331. See Ozell, John.

Radcliffe, Ann, buried near Sterne.
465.

Rainbowe, Edward, Bishop of Carlisle
8.

Ramelli, Le Diverse ed Artificiose Ma-
chine, 141.

Ramsay, Allan, portrait of Sterne, 34.
35 n.

Eavenet, S. P., engraver, 201, 221,
251, 532.

Rawdon, family of, ancestors of Lau
rence Sterne, 9-10.

Rawdon, Laurence, father of Lady
Mary Jaques, 9, 17.

Rawdon, Marmaduke, brother of Lady
Mary Jaques, 9 and n.

Rawdon, Mary, see Jaques, Lady Mary.

Ray, Mr., Sterne's banker at Mont-
pellier, 315, 318, 322.

Raynal, Abbe1, G. T. P., friendship
with Mrs. Draper, 500 and n, 507;
eulogy on Mrs. Draper, 508-509 and
n.

Reed, Isaac, 226, 227 n.

Reliquiae Baxteriance, quoted, 7 n, 8.

Reply to the Answer to a Letter lately
addressed to the Dean of York, A,
163-164, 174, 531.

Reynolds, Frederic, quoted, 161 and 7i,
362-363.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, first portrait of
Sterne, 201 and n, 221, 253, 361,
362, 513; subscriber to Sermons,
222; in Tristram Shandy, 251; sec-
ond portrait of Sterne, 331 and n;
with Sterne before death, 459 n,
460 and n; also 199, 514.

Reynolds, Richard, Bishop of Lincoln,
ordains Sterne deacon, 36.

Rioard, or Ricord, Arthur, of York,
100 and n, 470.

Richardson, Samuel, on Sterne, 819-

220; contrasted with, 516.
Rivers, George Pitt, first Baron, 290.
Robinson Crusoe, 453.
Rochester's poems, 29, 144.
Rochford, fourth Earl of, 322.
Rockingham, second Marquis of, 199,

514; takes Sterne to Windsor, 207-

208; at York races, 332.
Rodd, Thomas, bookseller, 136 n.
Rolle, Richard, of Hampole, 263.
Rome, Sterne's visit to, 379-380, 381-

382.
Romney, George, 110, 111.
Rousseau, J. J., 278, 283, 320;

Sterne's projected visit to, 323.
Roxburgh, third Duke of, 461.
Royal Female Magazine, 204, 207.
Rutland, third Duke of, 248.

Sade, Abbe de, friendship with Mrs.
Sterne and daughter, 391.

St. Ives, Sterne's curacy, 36.

St. James's Chronicle, 72-73, 268, 269,
270, 380 n, 389 n, 398 n, 459 n,
464 n.

Sancho, Ignatius, correspondence with
Sterne, 387-388, 439, 526; portrait
by Gainsborough, 390; obtains sub-
scribers to Sterne's Sermons, 402.

Sandwich, fourth Earl of, 122, 123.

Scarborough, Sterne's visits to, 118,
332, 426.

Scarron, Paul, 403, 435.

Sclater, family of, 403-404.

Sclater, Elizabeth, see Draper, Mrs.
Elizabeth.

.Sclater, Elizabeth, cousin of Mrs.
Draper, 404, 528-52'9.

Sclater, Louisa, sister of Mrs. Draper,
404, 485.

Sclater, Mary, sister of Mrs. Draper,
404, 409, 529.

Sclater, May, father of Mrs. Draper,
404, 530.

Sclater, Thomas Mathew, cousin of
Mrs. Draper, their early friendship,
404, 405; receives Sterne's first let-
ter to Mrs. Draper, 406; later
letters from Mrs. Draper, 496 and
ii, 504-505, 507, 529.

Scott, Rev. George, of Coxwold, 149.

Selwin, Mr., banker, 294.

Selwyn, George Augustus, attentions
to Sterne, 442-443.

Sentimental Journey, as autobiography,
360, et seq.; relation to Journal to
EUia, 433-435; relation to Smollett's

INDEX

§49

Travels, 435-437; purpose, 437;
composition, 432, 437-438; manu-
script, 445-450, 524 ; published in
two styles, 450 ; "Advertisement",
451 and n; subscribers, 401-402, 451-
452 ; reception, 452-453 ; second edi-
tion, 452 « ; translations, 453-454;
comments abroad, 454-455 ; con-
tinued by Hall- Stevenson, 480.

Sentimental Magazine, The, 490.

Sermone of Mr. YoricJc (vols. I-II),
agreement with Dodsley, 195, 208,
220-221; published, 221; preface,
221-222 ; attacked for title-page, 222-
223; praised for eloquence, 223-
225 ; not written for publication, 88-
89, 225, 226-227 and n, 228-229;
their character, 230-232; (vols. III-
IV), prepared for the press, 313,
344, 348; subscribers, 338-339, 348-
349; published, 351; described, 352-
359; (vols. V-VII, entitled Sermons
by the late Rev. Mr. Sterne), pub-
lished, 473-475 ; plagiarisms, 476-
478; notable passages, 478-479; ex-
tant manuscripts, 524.

Sessions Dinner, 158, 162 n, 163, 176;
in Tristram Shandy, 243.

Seven Letters written by Sterne, 535.

Sevigng, Mme. de, 286.

Shakespeare, imitated, 60 ; quoted, 90 ;
mentioned, 481, 523.

Shandy, meaning of the word, 188.

Shandy Hall, described, 235-236; re-
decorated, 422-423; later history,
469; tablet to Sterne, 469.

Sharp, Dr. Samuel, as "Mundungus"
in Sentimental Journey, 435 and n.

Sharpe, Rev. Nathan, Sterne's school-
master, 22-23, 26.

Shelburne, Earl of, 332; Sterne at his
levee, 393 ; correspondence with, 420,
433, 438, 439.

Sherlock, Thomas, Bishop of London,
224, 237.

Shuter, Edward, actor, 393.

Skelton Castle, described, 120-121;
Sterne's last visit to, , 425. See
Stevenson, John Hall-.

Sligniac, M., of Toulouse, 308.

Smellie, Dr. William, 78, 80 and n,
140.

Smollett, Tobias, Humphry Clinker,
126; Travels through France and
Italy, 304, 319-320, 377, 379; meets
Sterne, 319-320, 380; as "Smel-
fungus" in Sentimental Journey,

435-436, 447. See also Critical
Review.

Sommery, Mile, de, on Sentimental
Journey, 454.

Southwell, Lord, 391.

Spence, Joseph, Crito, 213 and n.

Spencer, John, first Viscount, friend-
ship with Sterne, 248-249; dedica-
tion of Tristram Shandy (V-VI),
264, 265-266, 268, 525, 532; in
Duke of York's set, 394; presents
Sterne with a silver standish, 420,
517 and n.

Spencer, Dr. John, De Legibus, 138

Stables, William, of York, 157, 158;
in A Political Romance, 165.

Stanhope, , Consul of Algiers,

299.

Stanhope, Charles, 206.

Stanhope, Sir William, 122, 439.

Stanhope, Lady Anne, 395.

Stanislas I., King of Poland, 274.

Stanley, Edward, friend of Sterne,
331m.

Stapfer, Paul, Laurence Sterne, 110;
"unpublished fragment" by Sterne,
144 and n, 145; records at Albi,
489?i.

Stapleford, the Sternes of, 4.

Stapleton, Sir Hiles, 75.

Steele, Christopher, portrait of Sterne,
110.

Steele, Richard, 11, 407; Christian
Hero, 227.

Stern, Lewis, painter, 111 and n.

Sterne, surname of, 4; early family-
seats, 4; pedigrees, 11 n.

Sterne, Agnes, mother of Laurence,
marriage, 13 ; children and hard-
ships, 13-16; at Clonmel, 16, 25,
94, 97; at York, alleged neglect by
son, vindication, 94-103 and n;
reconciliation, 117; death, 183-184.

Sterne, Catherine, sister of Laurence,
15, 16, 25; quarrel with brother,
94-103.

Sterne, Dorothy, first wife of Richard
Sterne of Halifax, 10.

Sterne, Elizabeth, wife of the Arch-
bishop, 8.

Sterne, Elizabeth, wife of Laurence,
appearance, 43, 110; marriage, 42-
43, 44, 45-49; fortune, 50, 101;
attack of insanity, 184-185, 207,
233, 521; coolness towards husband,
257; reconciliation, 260; Joins hus-
band in France, 293-307; remains
abroad with daughter, 323 ; rumours

550

INDEX

of separation from husband, 333;
visit from husband, 383-384; serious
illness, 387; settles at Avignon, 391;
hears of Sterne's infatuation for
■Mrs. Draper, 428 ; return to Cox-
wold, 430-432 ; plans for a separate
maintenance, 429, 431-432 ; illness
and hallucinations, 457; adminis-
tration of husband's estate, 470-472 ;
purses for her benefit, 471, 488 ;
publishes posthumous Sermons, 473-
475; retires to Angoullme, 481;
death at AIbi, 489.

Sterne, Esther, second wife of Richard
Sterne of Halifax, 10.

Sterne, Jaques, uncle of Laurence,
birth, 11; ecclesiastical appoint-
ments, 37, 68, 84; church-politician,
38 and n, 69; aids Laurence, 38;
pursuit of Roman Catholics and-
Jacobites, 70-71, 74-78 ; letters to
the Duke of Newcastle, 83-84; quar-
rel with Laurence, 87-103 ; death
and will, 184 and n.

Sterne, John, founder of Irish College
of Physicians, 4.

Sterne, John, Bishop of Clogher, son
of the preceding, 4.

Sterne, Laurence : ancestry, 3-11 ;
father, 11-16; mother, 13-16; birth,
13, 16; baptismal name, 16-17;
childhood, brothers and sisters, 13-
17; school, 18-25; love for military
books, 24-25 ; Cambridge, 26-34 ;
tutors, 27; associates, 27-28; read-
ing, and burlesque of curriculum,
29-33; degrees, 33; portrait by
Ramsay, 34 ; first hemorrhage, 34 ,
entries concerning Sterne in regis-
ter of Jesus College, 34-35 and n;
ordained deacon, 36; curate of
St. Ives, 36-37 ; aided by uncle
Jaques, 38; ordained priest, 38-39;
Vicar of Sutton-on-Porest, 39 and
n; entries in parish book, 40, 50-
52 ; Prebendary of Givendale, 40 ;
life at York, 41-42; courtship and
marriage, 42-49; love letters, 46-49;
Prebendary of North Newbald, 52 ;
Viear of Stillington, 52-54; conti-
nental tour, 54-55; farming and
purchases of land, 55-59, 115; as
Parson Yorick, 59-63 ; relations with
Philip Harland, 63-65 ; relations
with Stephen Croft, 65-66 ; asso-
ciated with uncle Jaques in politics,
69, 71, 72; paragraph- writer, 72-74,
77-78 ; caricatures Dr. Burton in

Tristram Shandy, 80-81; violent
hatred of Church of Rome, 81, 82;
two notable sermons, 82, 84-86,
530-531; persecuted by uncle Jaques,
87-103 ; cathedral sermons, 88 and
n, 89; commissaryships, 92-93, 158,
166; alleged neglect of mother and
sister, 93-94, 102 and n, 103, 517;
vindication, 94-102; enclosures at
Sutton, 105-106 ; painting portraits.
107-112; portrait by Bridges, 110;
friendship with Rev. John Blake,
112-115 ; sermon on Herod, 116 ;
anecdote, 117-118; excursions to
Skelton Castle with the Demoniacs,
119-129; racing, 124, 425; fiddling,'
126-127; jests, 128; facetious Latin
epistle, 127-128; library of facetious
and military books, 130-144; "un-
published fragment". 144-149; a
poem on the Unknown World, 149-
151; other verse, 129, 151-152, 408;
club at York, 153, 173 ; leases land
and tithes, 154; his part in quarrel
between Dean Pountayne and Dr.
Topham, 155, 157-159, 163, 176-
177; Sessions Dinner, 158, 163,
243, 244; A. Political Romance, 164-
169; Key to same, 169-173; ap-
pended letters, 174-176 ; Tdpham
silenced, 177 ; Romance suppressed,
177; sketch of himself in the Ro-
mance, 166, 170-171, 172, 173 ;
Tristram Shandy (vols. I-II) com-
posed, 178-181, published, 181-183;
death of mother, 183-184; death of
uncle Jaques, 184 ; illness of wife
and daughter, 185 ; flirtation with
Miss Pourmantelle, 185-187, 196,
199, 203-204; depicts himself, 188,
190; reception in London, 194-209;
his apartments, 198; agreements
with Dodsley, 195, 208; appointed
to Coxwold, 200; portrait by Rey-
nolds, 201 and n; second edition of
Tristram Shandy, 202-203 ; sketch
of Sterne in newspapers, 204; anec-
dote, 206; visit to "Windsor, 207-
208; attacked and burlesqued, 210-
220 ; Sermons (vols. I-II), pub-
lished, 220-222; reception of, 222-
225; borrowings, 225-227; de-
scribed, 227-232; business at York
and Sutton, 233-235; settlement at
Coxwold, 235-237 ; correspondence
with "Warburton, 237-238 ; compo-
sition and contents of Tristram
Shandy (vols. III-IV), 235-245 ;

INDEX

S51

retort on his critics, 245-246; second
visit to London, 246-256; Tristram
Shandy (vols. III-IV), published,
250-251; assailed by reviews, 251-
253; sermon at Foundling Hospital,
254-256; at Coxwold, 257-258;' cor-
onation sermon, 258-259; purchase
of books, 259; clerum, 259; Tris-
tram Shandy (vols. V-VI), 259-265;
London visit, 264 et seq.; meets
Br. Johnson, 265-266; changes pub-
lisher, 266-267; reviews, 267-268;
illness, 268; reported dead, 269-
270; journey to Paris, 268, 271-
272 ; reception, 272-292 ; his Boswell,
279-281 ; explains his personality,
281-282 ; portrait by Oarmontelle,
288-289; illness, 289-290; Dutens's
story, 290-292 ; prepares to settle
at Toulouse, 293-294; wife and
daughter summoned, 294-298; anec-
dote, 298-299; illness, 299; journey
to Toulouse via Auxerre, Lyons,
Avignon, and Montpellier, 300-307;
sojourn at Toulouse, 308-312; writ-
ing Tristram Shandy and revising
sermons, 310, 312-313; illness, 310;
financial distress, 312, 314-315;
trip to Bagneres, 313, 314, 316;
sojourn at Montpellier, 316-323;
meets Smollett, 319-320; illness, 321-
322; returns to Paris, 323-326;
sermon at English embassy, 326-
327; clash with Hume, 327-328;
return to England, 330; sits again
to Reynolds, 331; York races, 331-
332; at Scarborough, 332; Tristram
Shandy (vols. VII-VIII), published,
334, assailed, 335-336; laments
absence of Garrick, 337-338; sub-
scribers to forthcoming Sermons,
338, 339; trip to Bath, 339 et seq.;
friendship with Mrs. Vesey, 340-
341 ; sits to Gainsborough, 341 ; at
Lady Lepell's, 341; letter to Lady
Percy, 342-343 and n; at Shandy
Hall, preparing sermons for press,

344, 348; parsonage at Sutton
burned, 345-346; hemorrhages, 344,
347; York races, 347-348; meets
Miss Graeme, 348; amusing letters,

345, 349; subscribers to Sermons
(vols. III-IV), 350, published, 351,
described, 351-359; journey through
France and Italy, 361 et seq.; prepa-
ration for, 338, 350; relation of
the tour to the Sentimental Journey,
360 et seq.; Sterne's appearance,

360-361; Calais, 361-365; Montreuil,
365-367; La Fleur, 366-367 et seq.;
Paris, 367-372; anecdote, 371-372;
poor Maria, 372-374 ; vintage dance, -
374-375; Lyons, 375; Pont-de-Beau-
voisin, 375-376 ; mountain-passes,
376; Turin, 377; Milan, 378-379;
Florence, 379; Rome, 379-380; a
winter at Naples, 380-381; Borne
again, 381; bust by NoIIekens, 381;
journey home, 381-382 et seq.; visit
to his wife, 383-384; Paris, 384;
London, 384; return to Shandy Hall,
depressed, 386; worried by illness
of wife in France, 387; enclosure
of Stillington Common, 387, 390;
correspondence with Ignatius Sancho,
387-388; last sermon in York Cathe-
dral, 388-389; last vol. of Tristram
Shandy written, 389-390; recovery
of Mrs. Sterne, 390-391; visit to
London, 392 et seq.; lodgings, 392;
levees and dinners, 393 ; meets
Arthur Lee and Franklin, 393-394;
attentions of the Duke of York, 394;
friendship with Commodore James
and his wife, 395-396 ; attends Mrs.
Cornelys's assembly, 397-398; pub-
lication of Tristram Shandy (vol.
IX), 398; its reception, 399-401;
assailed in an anonymous letter to
his archbishop, 399-400; subscribers
for Sentimental Journey, 401-402 ;
friendship with Mrs. Draper, 403
et seq.; first meeting, 406; present
of Sermons and Tristram Shandy,
406; excursions together, 407; Mrs.
Draper's letters and portrait, 407;
Sterne's elegy, 408; offers his
protection, 409-410 ; separation, 410-
411 ; Sterne's account of the in-
fatuation, 412 ; Journal to Eliza,
412-415 et seq., 433-435; serious
illness, 416-418; flirtation with
Sheba, 419; journey home, 420-
421; summer at Coxwold, 421-422;
intrusion of Mrs. Draper's image,
422-424, 427, 437-438; letter to
Daniel Draper, 424-425 ; visits to
Skelton Castle and Harrogate, 425;
letter from Mrs. Draper, 425-426;
visit to Scarborough, 426-427;
offers of preferment, 426-427; return
of wife and daughter, 428-432 ;
Sentimental Journey, composed, 433-
439; alterations in MS., 445-450;
published, 450-451; praised at home
and abroad, 452-455; severe hemor-

552

INDEX

rhages, 438 ; last journey to London,
438-439; lodgings crowded with
friends, 442 ; associations with
George Selwyn, 442-443 ; a walking-
stick from Dr. Eustace of South
Carolina, 443-444; last illness, 456
et seq.; attentions of Beauclerk, 456,
Lord Ossory, 456, Commodore
James, 458, 460, Reynolds, 460,
and others, 458, 461; last letter to
Lydia, 457-458; last letter to Mrs.
James, 458-459; death, 459-461;
announcement, 461-462; Lessing's
remark, 462, 512; funeral, 462-
463; body stolen from grave, 463-
465; inscriptions on tomb, 466-468;
tablet at Shandy Hall, 469 ; adminis-
tration of his goods, 470-472 ; debts
liquidated by friends, 471; library,
471 n; MSS., 472-473 and n, 487;
posthumous Sermons, 473-479; Sen-
timental Journey, continued by Hall-
Stevenson, 479-480; projected bi-
ography, 480-484; publication of
correspondence and memoirs, 490-
495; final sale of lands at Sutton,
490; Sterne's last descendant, 495;
Mrs. Draper's last words upon
Sterne, 497; his ghost, /510; sum-
mary, 511 et seq.; friendships,
511-512; conversation, 512, 520;
appearance and eyes, 513-514; fame,
514; zest for life, 515; paganism,
515-516; virtues and vices, 516;
punctual in appointments, 516-517;
sincerity, 518; volatile temperament,
518-519; relations with women, 519-
520 ; humour, 520-523 ; extant MSS,
524-530; authentic works, 530-537./
Sterne, Lydia, daughter of Laurence,
birth, 59; at school, 185, 207;
prank, 233 ; her father's amanuensis,
260; illness, 289; accompanies
mother to southern France, 293-
307; remains with mother, 323;
her father's tender letter from Paris,
329; proposal of marriage, 345;
life at Avignon, 391; returns home
with mother, 430-432; her father's
last letter, 457-458; publication of
his Sermons, 473-475; her part in
projected biography of her father,
480-484; at Angouleme, 481-482;
her marriage at Albi, 488-489 and
n; death of husband, 490; visit to
London and publication of her
father's correspondence, 490-495,

534-535; death at Albi, 495; also
380, 407, 408, 413, 471, 505.

Sterne, Margery, wife of Simon Sterne
of Mansfield, 4.

Sterne, Mary, wife of Simon Sterne
of Halifax, 10.

Sterne, Richard, Archbishop of York,
great-grandfather of Laurence, ca-
reer, 5-8 and n, 26.

Sterne, Richard, of Blvington, cousin
of Laurence, 25-26; his allowance
to Laurence for Cambridge, 26, 27,
34, 37.

Sterne, Richard, of Halifax, uncle of
Laurence, 10-11; takes charge of
Laurence's education at school, 18,
34; interest in local grammar
schools, 21, 22; death, 11, 25.

Sterne, Richard, of Kilvington, eldest
son of Archbishop Sterne, 8-9.

Sterne, Roger, father of Laurence,
career and character, 11-16, 514.

Sterne, Simon, of Mansfield, ancestor
of Laurence, 4.

Sterne, Simon, of Halifax, third son
of the archbishop and grandfather
of Laurence, 9, 10.

Sterne, Timothy, cousin of Laurence,
25-26.

Sterne, William, of Cropwell-Butler,
ancestor of Laurence, 4.

Sterne, William, of Mansfield, second
son of the Archbishop, 9.

Stevenson, John Hall-, at Jesus Col-
lege, 28-29 ; as Eugenius in Tris-
tram Shandy, 62, 128, 189, 271
continental tour, 118; marriage.
118; inherits Skelton Castle, 119
library, 119, 130; Crazy Tales, 120,
128-129, 299, 309, 310; appear-
ance and character, 119 n, 121
122 ; Sterne and the Demoniacs,
122-129; Lyric Epistles, 211; visits
and trips with Sterne, 331-332,
425; sup together in London, 384,
416; absent at Sterne's death, 463;
rumour about Sterne's body, 464
and n; raises purse for widow and
daughter, 471; his continuation of
Sentimental Journey, 480; projected
Life of Sterne, 480-484; also 382,
387, 420, 429, 473, 493, 522, 526,
533.

Stevinus, Nouvelle Haniere de Fortifi-
cation, 142, 143.

Stillington, Sterne appointed Vicar of,
52-54; Enclosure Act, 333 and n,
387, 390.

INDEX

553

Stormont, seventh Viscount, ambassa-
dor at Vienna, 382.

Stothard, Thomas, painter, 60.

Stow-cum-Quy, the Sternes of, 4.

Strahan, William, publisher, 474.
, Stratton, George, of Bombay, 410.

Suard, Jean Baptiste, reviews Tris-
tram Shandy, 276, 335, 336; his
career, 279-280; admiration for
Sterne, 280-282 and n, 287, 511-
512; also 324.

Suard, Mme. (wife of J. B. Suard),
279, 280; on Sentimental Journey,
454, 455 7i.

Suckling, Sir John, 270.

Sukey Shandy, Miss, 214.

Sunton's Coffee-House, York, Sterne's
resort, 41, 153, 173, 184.

Supplement to * * * Tristram Shandy,
A, 215.

Sutton-on-the-Forest, Sterne's parish,
described, 39-40, 59; settlement at,
50; parish registry, 40, 50-52, 59;
Enclosure Act, 105-106 and n, 234-
235, 490.

Swift, Jonathan, Tale of the Tub, 134,
136, 169, 213, 399; Swift and
Stella, 45, 403; also 4, 179, 523.

Symonds, John, with Sterne in Italy,
380, 381, 528.

Synopsis Oommunvam Locorum, Sterne's
exercise-book at school, 23.

Tacitus, Sterne's opinion of, 29.

Talbot, William, first Earl, 248.

Tartaglia, Quesiti ed Invenzioni Di-
verse, 142.

Tavistock, Francis Russell, Marquis
of, 290, 291, 325.

Taylor, Jeremy, Holy Living and Holy
Dying, 144.

Temple, Eichard, second Earl, 207.

Tenison, Thomas, Archbishop of Can-
terbury, Baconiana, 138.

Textus Boffensis, see Ernulf.

Thackeray, quoted or referred to, 134,
362, 453, 513, 519; on Sterne and
Dutens, 292; on Sterne and Lady
Percy, 343 n; on the flirtation with
Mrs. Draper, 414 and ».

Thayer, H. W., Sterne in Germany,

446 n, 454 n.
Theocritus, Sterne's opinion of, 29.
Thicknesse, Philip, on M. Dessein, 362

and 7i.
Thirty-Fourth, or Cumberland Regi-
ment of Foot, its colonels and

Roger Sterne's service in, 11-16;
history of, 12 n; Laurence Sterne's
memories of, 17.
Thompson, George, of York, 79 and n.
Thoresby, Ralph, Diary, 9 and n.
Thornhill, Thomas, of London, 297,
298, 302, 320; Sterne with him at
Paris, 323; Sterne his guest in
London, 330, 331.
Thrale, Mrs., see Piozzi, Mrs.
Tillotson, John, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, sermons, 144, 224, 225, 227,
229, 353.
Times of India, 503 n.
Todd, John, York bookseller, 131.
Tollot, M., of Geneva, on Sterne, 283
and it, 320-321 ; Sterne his guest in
Paris, 323 ; goes to England with
Sterne, 330, 331.
Tooke, John Home, with Sterne at

Lyons, 375 and n.
Topham, Edward (son of Francis),

161.
Topham, Dr. Francis, of York, 91, 93;
offices, 155-156 ; quarrel with Dean
Fountayne and Sterne, 156-164;
pamphlets in the quarrel, 163 ;
silenced by Sterne in A. Political
Romance, 164-177; introduced into
Tristram, Shandy, 189, 244; grants
letters for administration of Sterne's
goods, 470.
Torricelli, 143.

Toulouse, Sterne's life at, 308-315.
Townshend, Charles, 248.
Trail, Dr. James, 326.
Translations of Sterne's works, 453-

455.
Tristram Shandy (vols. I-II), com-
position, 178^181 ; publication, 181-
183 ; local interest in the book,
187-189; contents, 190-192; first
reviews,* 192-193 ; defended against
criticism, 179, 193-194 and n; re-
ception in London, 195 ; second
edition, 195, 201-203, 208; third
and fourth editions, 203 ; attacked
and burlesqued, 211-215; as viewed
by literary men, 216-218, by moral
ists, 218-220; (vols. III-IV) com-
posed, 235-237, 246; contents,
238-246; published, 250-251; at
tacked, 250, 251-253; (vols. V-VI)
259-264; published by Becket, 265
266; dedication^ "265 ; praised, 267
268, 269; sale, 295-296, 312
(vols. VII- VIII) begun at Tou
louse, 310-311, 312-313; design,

554

INDEX

314, 435; completed, 333-334, pub-
lished, 334-335; reception, 335-337;
(vol. IX) written, 388, 389-390;
published, 398; dedication, 399;
reprobated by moralists, 399-400;
eloquence, 401 ; Sterne's last words
on Tristram Shandy, 443-444; ex-
tant manuscripts, 524-525 ; first edi-
tions, 531-533 ; imitations, 213-214,
215, 254, 264, 265, 267.

Tristram Shandy, A Third Volume of,
by John Carr, 215.

Tristram Shandy at Ranelagh, 214.

Tristram Shandy in a Reverie, 214.

Trotter, Lawson, of Skelton, Jacobite,
118, 299, 324, 325.

Turner, Charles, of Kirkleatham, 320,
332, 425.

Turner, Cholmley, 38, 75.

Turney, John, of Leek Wotton, quoted,
19

Tutors of Sterne, 27.

Universal Register, 219 n.

Unknown World, The, 149-151, 152,
536.

Unpublished Fragment, 144-149. 537.

Unpublished Letters of L. Sterne, 535.

Upper Ossory, second Earl of, requests
Reynolds to paint Sterne, 201 ; in
Paris with Sterne, 371 ; later friend-
ship, 393 ; friend of the Jameses,
406; announces Sterne's death, 461.

Tallis Eboracensis, see Gill, Thomas.

Van Coehorn, Nouvelle Maniere de
Fortifier les Places, 142.

Vanbrugh and Cibber's Journey to
London, recast by Sterne, 312.

Vansittart, Eobert, 249, 250.

Varennes, M., 365, 366.

Vauban, Prestre de, De I'Attaque et
de la Defense des Places, 142.

Vence, Mine, de, 286, 287.

Vergil, Sterne's fondness for, 24, 29.

Vesey, Mrs. Elizabeth, Sterne's friend-
ship with, 339-341, 426, 519, 527,
534, 535.

Ville, Chevalier de, Les Fortifications,
142.

Voltaire, Oandide, 144; praise of
Sterne's Sermon on Conscience, 276,
277, 518-519; Sterne's projected
visit to, 323; Olympic, 324; sub-
scribes to Sermons, 350.

Walker, Abraham, pilot, 411.

Walker, Bev, John, Vicar of Sutton,
50.

Waller, Edmund, 403.

Walpole, Horace, on Sterne's neglecS
of mother, 102 ; on Tristram Shandy,
195, 216-217 and n, 251; on Sterne's
dullness, 371 ; on Sentimental Jour-
ney, 452 ; receives news of Sterne's
death, 461 ; entertained by his let-
ters, 493; also 67, 119, 198, 207,
278, 325, 379 and n, 395 and n.

Wanly (Wanley), Rev. Francis, Preb.
of York, 227 n, 524.

Warburton, William, friendship with
Sterne, 196-198; purse of guineas,
197, 207, 210-211; correspondence
with Sterne, 212, 237-238, 493;
repudiates Sterne, 248 and n, 249,
267 and n, 511; in Tristram Shandy,
251, 267, 399; edition of Pope, 279.

Ward, Csesar, York printer, 73, 131,
174, 182, 530, 531.

Ward, Dr. William, of York, 156, 157,
158, 159.

Watson, Bev. Daniel, letter on Sterne,
103 n.

Watts-Dunton, Theodore, on Sterne,
522.

Welsh, Col. James, Reminiscences, 509.

West, Benjamin, painter, 456.

Wharton, Thomas, 203, 216 and n.

Whatley, George, 102 n, 254-255 and
n, 536.

Whitefoord Papers, anecdotes of Sterne,
43 n, 177 n, 463 n. See Croft, John.

Whitehead, Paul, 122

Whitehead, William, 222.

Whitehill, Mrs., aunt of Mrs. Draper,
410.

Whitehill, ThomaB, uncle of Mrs.
Draper, 503-505.

Wilford, Miss, dancer, 343 and n.

Wilkes, John, 122, 123, 222, 249,
362 m, 394, 471 and n, 474, 530;
with Sterne in Paris, 323-324 and
n, 370, 371 ; coolness between them,
474; project for biography of Sterne,
480-484; acquaintance with Mrs.
Draper, 506-507, 508.

Wilkinson, Bichard, curate, 40, 51, 54,
92, 200.

Wilkinson, Tate, actor, 42, 43.

Williams, George James ("Gilly"),
392.

Willis's Current Notes, 208 n, 465 «,
471 n.

Wilmot, Sir Edward, 194.

Winchelsea, Earl of, 199.

INDEX

555

Wodhull, Michael, 111.

Wollaston, William, Sterne's borrow-
ings from, 227 and n, 478.

Woodhouse, , 311, 344-345.

Woodhouse, George, of York, 158, 244.

Wordsworth, Christopher, 32 n.

Works of Sterne, see the Appendix.

Worthington, Dr. William, Preb. of
York, 468.

Wright, Miss, 343 n.

Wycherley, William, plays, 29.

Xenophon, Gyropcedia, 261.

Yorick, the name assumed by Sterne,

3, 55; as depicted in Tristram
Shandy, 59-63, 104, 242, 243, 260.

Yoriclc's Sentimental Journey Con-
tinued, 480.

York, Edward Augustas, Duke of, at-
tentions to Sterne, 207, 394-395,
402 ; present at Sterne's last sermon,
389.

York Oourant, quoted or cited, 41 n,
42 n, 63 n, 64 n, 71 n, 73, 74, 75,
113, 155, 157 n, 468 n, 471 n.

York Journal or Protestant Oourant,
Sterne's contributions to, 73, 77.

Young, Edward, Dean of Salisbury,
sermons, 144, 225.

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